Saying Grace

Remember when you received your first copy of AARP Magazine? It felt like a cold hand reaching up from the grave. Looking the other way, you picked it up like a dead mouse, a page pinched between forefinger and thumb, and threw it in the trash. Fast forward a decade or two and, admit it, you actually sit down and read the magazine. Even articles and interviews about dying are of passing interest (no pun intended).

AARP Magazine is the world’s largest circulation magazine and cleverly publishes separate demographic editions to make us feel age-appropriately informed and comforted. There’s an issue for ages 50-59, for ages 60-69, and then (drum roll), there’s 70-plus. I hate to break it to you, but 70-plus is code for “you’re going to die soon so you don’t really count.” It’s also blatant ageism. Even in the AARP world, where you’d think we’d get some respect, the 70-, 80- and 90-year-olds don’t rate a demographic distinction, despite the fact there are currently 33 million over the age of 70 in the U.S., one in 25 are in their 80s, and it’s projected there will be 8 million over 90 by 2050. Most importantly, each of these generations is exquisitely idiosyncratic and deserves better than societal and statistical homogenization.

Despite the attempted erasure of the 70-plus crowd, what those of us in that composite know is that these are the plus (as in bonus) years. Those still going strong take nothing for granted. They also know anything’s possible. There’s no telling what lies ahead, on Planet Earth or beyond. I mean, the way things are going with AI, who knows! Maybe the 70-plus team will have the last word. Maybe there will be a way to submit monthly columns from, well, the other side. Maybe a deceased painter will be able to remotely move a brush across the canvas. Maybe dying, as we know it, will become obsolete. Stranger things…are starting to happen.

A new Netflix series, “Famous Last Words,” interviews late-life notables regarding their “recent death,” even though it hasn’t yet occurred, and then broadcasts the interviews posthumously. In March 2025, at age 91, Jane Goodall, the world-renowned ethologist and conservationist, was interviewed. Of all the famous oldsters’ conversations stored in a vault at Netflix, Goodall’s was the one that launched the series on Oct. 3. Why? Because she was the first of the interviewees to die, on Oct. 1. The weird possible subtext here is that Netflix is eagerly anticipating the death of the others. The other weird possible subtext is the living interviewees feel that pressure. After all, the show must go on.

Goodall’s work with chimpanzees is legend, forever changing the way people think about and engage with primates. In her interview, she gave us human primates an assignment: “We depend on Mother Nature for clean air, for water, for food, for clothing, for everything. And as we destroy one ecosystem after another, as we create worse climate change, worse loss of diversity, we have to do everything in our power to make the world a better place for the children alive today, and for those that will follow. Do your best while you’re still on this beautiful Planet Earth that I look down upon from where I am now. God bless you all.”

Hearing her refer to herself as dead during the interview is fascinating and unsettling. And it’s mind-bending to find yourself perceiving her as dead and simultaneously perceiving the interviewer, Brad Falchuk, as living. For those nearing and/or fearing death, Goodall assures it’s all fine there, wherever “there” is for each of us, and that the view is spectacular. We forget that at the time of the interview she actually hasn’t gotten “there” yet and/but by the time we see the interview, she has. What else to do but surrender to the mystery of this bardo, to suspend disbelief.

Many human primates who call the United States home (and aren’t among the 60 million Americans struggling to put food on the table) will soon gather for Thanksgiving and will give thanks for the bounty our longsuffering Planet Earth managed to produce once again. At best, it’s time with family and friends and is more grace-full than the hyped December holidays ahead. Should you need last minute Thanksgiving tips and recipes, you can always find them in AARP Magazine. And what better grace to offer before this traditional meal than Jane Goodall’s final wish for us all, including and especially 70-plus-year-olds. “I want to make sure that you all understand that each and every one of you has a role to play,” she says. “…your life matters, and you are here for a reason.”

This article appears in Source Weekly November 27, 2025.