Goines On: Longevity

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Goines was starting not to think of Mrs. Goines as “nagging” him. The truth was that most of the time she was giving him useful advice – about getting exercise, avoiding contamination of his sinus rinse, protecting his medications from the moisture of the kitchen, and quite a few other things that she stayed on top of more closely than he was always comfortable with.
    The truth also was that he loved Mrs. Goines and he wasn’t sure he could keep going on if he lost her. She did have some worrisome physical problems.
    The other day, after she visited a website that offered a calculator for determining in what year of her life she would begin to be of “old age,” she told Goines that, according to the calculator, she should live to be 98. And she had answered the calculator’s questions for Goines too, and learned that he should live to be 102. This “news” had invigorated and excited her – and highlighted the beauty of her face, which he had found attractive over half a century ago and still found attractive (when she smiled, if not when she scowled or nagged him).
    Mrs. Goines had told him once that she expected to die before he did. Goines didn’t like to hear that, and he hoped she wouldn’t. He was encouraged to observe that she seemed to regard “taking care of” Goines as a personal mission of hers, and he hoped that the mission would keep her alive. It might help if he went along with it more, gave up more of his independence. And if the personal mission thing worked, then it would help her, too, for him to live as long as possible.

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