LONG LIVE SLEEP
Rest helps us stay active
My Feb. 9 column prompted the usual flow of welcome reader feedback, this time including two great examples of proactive octogenarian living. One came from a gentleman who, after six decades of practising law in Ontario, last year, at age 85, moved to New Brunswick. Last January, he qualified in that province and is now practising law there!
The other came by mail in an envelope from a lady my age. In it was a short handwritten note apologizing for her handwriting (little does she know that mine was already far worse than hers when I was less than half her age). And it contained two other items.
One was her delightful 15-page biography of a well-lived life of rainbows and downers that ended with, “Now to look forward to what may transpire in the future.” And the other was a 28-page children's book, Gordy Grasshopper Goes to Sea, which she had produced a couple years ago and which I hope to pass on to my great-grandson.
It also prompted an email from a fellow multiple myeloma sufferer who was diagnosed with the cancer in 2012, before she was even 50, and who still is under active treatment for it, whereas I was declared “cured” in 2009 after seven years. And she reminded me that March is the Dorval, Que.-based Myeloma Canada's designated multiple myeloma awareness month. For this year it has chosen the theme “You have the power.” That's something each and every one of us old fogeys should remember and apply every day, so as to make the most of every day.
A friend sent me a video of a Ted Talk on longevity. What caught my attention was that the presenter said the two key determinants of longevity have nothing to do with diet, exercise, medical care, smoking or drinking. They're casual social interaction — talking to the mailman or with people on the street, and so on — and close relationships, having friends one can call late at night to pour one's heart out to.
Having mislaid the link, I Googled “Ted Talk on longevity” and stumbled on one by Montreal psychologist Susan Pinker, who referred to the Ted Talk I had heard and showed the list of factors mentioned there. You may want to Google it.
We are nearing the end of a long winter. More people are not going out, or have further withdrawn in their apartments, than since the pandemic started. And there are even fewer people on transit vehicles than in the past year or so.
This is another case of negative mind over matter. When I came to Canada in 1952, we used the Fahrenheit scale. Hearing -20 C sounds awful, but is really just “4 below” in Fahrenheit, which is considered “not a bad day.”
And when I go out to catch a bus at -20 C with no wind or clouds in the blue sky, and onethird of the way to the summer solstice with the sun getting stronger, doing so is by no means a hardship.
I finished reading Tom Hickman's 2005 book Churchill's Bodyguard, another rescue from the book exchange box in the lobby. It tells his story through the eyes of Walter Thompson, Churchill Scotland Yard bodyguard for many years between 1921 and 1945. He wrote a couple of bestsellers about it and, after he retired, went on speaking tours about the experience. Later, when their paths crossed, Churchill told him, “Thompson, you are doing a wonderful thing for yourself. You are using your brain by writing and lecturing. If only people, when they retire, would keep their brains alive and active, as you have done, they would live for a long time.” (That has been my old age recipe too: For nearly 20 years I have been writing a weekly newsletter on global economics, finance and politics, two years ago started writing an autobiography for my grandchildren and a year ago writing this column.)
I had never realized how much of a hands-on leader Churchill was (rare in today's world) and how much opportunity he had given the Nazis to shoot down a plane in which he was travelling. He seems to have been a bit of a danger addict.
My main complaint about aging is my need for seven or eight hours of sleep. I always looked upon sleeping as a waste of time and operated on four hours of it (a habit apparently shared by Churchill). I look upon it as an acquired habit: If you like sleeping, you “need” a lot, but if you think it's a waste of time, you don't seem to. But now the really annoying part is that it cuts further into my ability to do things, especially since it now takes me so long to do so little.
I still almost invariably fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow. Little interrupts my sleep until wake-up time. I seldom dream, and when I do, never remember what I dreamt about. Only three things seem able to wake me up from a sound sleep: When our children were small and so much as stirred at night, I woke up. When we had our first farm, there was no fence around the house and the stock often spent the night not far from our bedroom window. Any unusual noise emanating from them would wake me. And the word “fire!” is like a cannon shot.
The intensity of my sleep was demonstrated in 1969 after a murderer killed a Saskatchewan farm family. We lived in Carleton Place, Ont., and in typical smalltown fashion never locked our doors.
A few weeks later, my wife woke up in the middle of the night, hearing footsteps downstairs, and tried to wake me but utterly failed. Then the footsteps came up the stairs, down the hall and the bedroom door opened and she envisaged us all being killed as I slept through it.
But it was two friends from university. The younger brother had then been about to join the Jesuits but now was married with a pregnant wife. They had been partying in Ottawa and decided to go and see us and had driven 50 kilometres from Ottawa to do so.
And, after having some drinks with us from a bottle they had brought with them to celebrate the occasion and sitting on my side of the bed with my wife on the other with her sheet pulled up to her chin, they happily drove back to Ottawa.