I’m trying to disentangle myself from all my confused, shortsighted, and unprofitable affairs before I leave this world. I don’t want to leave a mess behind for someone else to clean up.

Not that I’m in ill-health. To the best of my knowledge, I’m in the best physical condition I’ve been in years. Like all of us, I’m not getting any younger, and sixty-eight is a perfectly reasonable age at which to simply drop dead.

When my mother died, she left behind no mess at all. Everything was neatly handled and packaged. My father dropped dead while walking the dog. He had just turned sixty-four. Fortunately for his chemistry students at the community college, he had just finished grading their final exams and entered their final grades in his grade book.

I’m more at peace now than I’ve been in a very long time. I have fewer things to be anxious about. I’m not necessarily happier than I’ve ever been, but I am less worried than at any time I can recall, and that seems odd because I’m also closer to death than I’ve ever been.

Aren’t you supposed to fear death?

I don’t.

I’m more curious than apprehensive. Dying is sort of like traveling to a foreign country that nobody knows anything about. Will it be fun? Will the inhabitants be nice to me? Whatever it’s going to be like, my advance opinions about it don’t matter in the least regarding the outcome. It is what it is. And it isn’t what it isn’t. Will I meet Grandma and my long-deceased pet kitten in the Great Beyond? Dunno. Either way, it won’t be a tragedy if my expectations are dashed. On the other hand, it may be better than I’ve ever let myself imagine.