One morn­ing a cou­ple of days before my 74^th birth­day, I stepped on some­thing par­tial­ly buried in the dirt in my horse cor­ral. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. A porce­lain round wafer the size of a lol­lipop mount­ed on a five-inch-long met­al rod. Etched in black let­ters on its off-white sur­face: “NOT DEAD YET.”

I don’t know the sto­ry behind its wry mes­sage, who lost it in the cor­ral, or what its intend­ed pur­pose may have been, but its serendip­i­tous dis­cov­ery right before a high-num­bered birth­day seemed a good omen.

I took it home, staked it in the cen­ter of a saucer-sized pie, and post­ed a pho­to of it on Face­book under the com­ment, “Birth­days at this age are fun, ain’t they?”

It seemed to hit a chord, espe­cial­ly with the “mature” crowd, gar­ner­ing a bunch of likes and birth­day wish­es. Some weren’t so encour­ag­ing. One of my for­mer Lath­am law part­ners wrote, “You have to won­der how many are bewil­dered you are not dead yet.” Anoth­er Lath­am guy said, “Keep doing these birth­days long enough and you will be dead.”

High-pow­ered lawyers can be a pain in the butt. Why I left Lath­am to become a cab­bage vendor.

Undaunt­ed, I ate the pie and stashed the porce­lain lol­lipop in my desk drawer.

On my 75^th birth­day, I used it to save mon­ey on birth­day-cake can­dles. That year I also dis­cov­ered an arti­cle by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a renowned oncol­o­gist, bioethi­cist, and health­care advis­er to Pres­i­dents Oba­ma and Biden, enti­tled Why I Hope to Die at 75, in which he argues the world would be a bet­ter place if he and the rest of us kicked the buck­et at the three-quar­ter-cen­tu­ry mark. Accord­ing to him, at age 75 most of us head into a steep phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive decline. No longer capa­ble of mak­ing valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety, we live on only to inflict crush­ing emo­tion­al and finan­cial bur­dens on our loved ones.

As a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the 75 club, I took offense and wrote a blog try­ing to rebut Dr. Zeke’s premise. See Stay­ing Alive at 75.

My 76^th birth­day rolled on by this month. One year past Dr. Zeke’s sell-by date, I haven’t plunged into a steep phys­i­cal decline. In fact, I’m in bet­ter shape now than I was ten years ago. Back then, I expe­ri­enced a sud­den weight gain. My rate of metab­o­lism slowed with age to the point that a banana slug could crawl over a field of jagged boul­ders faster than I could burn calo­ries. I could gain ten pounds inhal­ing the fumes com­ing off a hot pizza.

My doc­tor told me to go on a diet. Diets for my age group fol­low three basic prin­ci­ples: If it tastes good, you can’t eat it; if it tastes bad, you can only eat micro-por­tions of it; and if you drink any­thing con­tain­ing alco­hol, sug­ar, caf­feine, salt, mer­cury, lac­tic acid, fruc­tose, gluten, or arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, it’ll kill you. You can eat lim­it­ed amounts of raw let­tuce, card­board-fla­vored sug­ar­less oat­meal, organ­ic non-fat plain yogurt, and noth­ing else. The good news is you can wash it down with as much water as you want, as long as it’s dis­tilled or boiled.

I couldn’t do it. Sug­ar-glazed donuts, fam­i­ly-sized bags of Dori­tos, Big Macs with large fries, and six­packs of Coors Light called out to me with siren songs I couldn’t resist. I went back to the doc­tor and con­fessed my eat­ing binges.

“You’ll become Jab­ba The Hut,” she said.

“I don’t care. I can’t eat piles of green leaves and bowls of por­ridge for the rest of my life. There has to be anoth­er way.”

My only alter­na­tive, she said, was to burn off the calo­ries. She pre­scribed a rig­or­ous exer­cise program.

I set up an in-home work­out area with an exer­cise ball, bar­bells, dumb­bells, ket­tle bells, resis­tance straps, and a weight bench. Three times a week, I jumped around, sweat­ed, and grunt­ed a lot. A few pounds came off, but the scales wouldn’t budge lower.

I hired a phys­i­cal train­er. She ratio­nal­ized my weight-lift­ing rou­tine and intro­duced me to bal­ance exer­cis­es. Falls are the lead­ing cause of injury and deaths for my age group. Every sec­ond of every day, some­one over 65 falls; 36 mil­lion falls per year; 32,000 deaths. Prac­tic­ing bal­ance reduces that risk, but it also gives you a good work­out. Try stand­ing on one foot for six­ty sec­onds. If you can do it with­out tip­ping over (most peo­ple over 65 can­not), your leg mus­cles will feel it big time.

My train­er incor­po­rat­ed a reg­i­men of chal­leng­ing bal­ance exer­cis­es into my rou­tine, but I still couldn’t hit my tar­get­ed weight. We added dai­ly walks. Walk­ing thir­ty min­utes burns 150 calo­ries and improves car­dio­vas­cu­lar health. I walk with my dog, P.D. Along with its weight loss ben­e­fits, stud­ies show dog-walk­ing is relax­ing and reduces stress. Appar­ent­ly, P.D.’s approach to walks was not includ­ed in these stud­ies. He has two gears, sub-low, where he stops to pon­der a scent for three hours, and for­mu­la-race-car high, dur­ing which he runs like the wind, jerk­ing my arm out of my shoul­der sock­et and drag­ging me on my bel­ly through bri­ar patch­es. Nev­er­the­less, when my walks with P.D. don’t esca­late into a near-death expe­ri­ence, they burn fat cells.

In the mid­dle of all this, I took up horse­back rid­ing. I didn’t turn to rid­ing for weight con­trol, but it turned out to be a big help. Groom­ing the hors­es, tack­ing them up, and work­ing around the barn shed weight, and rid­ing works the core, abs, pelvis, legs, and arms. Rid­ing at a walk burns 300 calo­ries an hour. You can burn 700 calo­ries at a gal­lop, but gal­lop­ing can also kill you. I ride most­ly at a walk.

With all that activ­i­ty, instead of expe­ri­enc­ing the phys­i­cal decline Dr. Zeke pre­dict­ed at age 75, my phys­i­cal con­di­tion improved greatly.

On the cog­ni­tive front, I’m in rea­son­ably good shape, too, although I’ll admit I’ve noticed a few minor issues. Vex­ing ques­tions I nev­er con­sid­ered a few years ago now con­sume an ever-grow­ing amount of my time. Puz­zling impon­der­ables, such as “Why did I walk into this room?” And “What day is it?”

I also tend to lose more stuff. Some­times in plain sight. Like the time I searched high and low for my cell phone when it was in my left hand, or the occa­sions when I couldn’t find my read­ing glass­es while they were perched on the end of my nose. But hey, these inci­dents are rare, occur­ring on aver­age less than once an hour. (I don’t include in this count all those times I lost my car keys. After all, it’s not my fault some wise-ass keeps sneak­ing into the house and hid­ing them in the refrigerator.)

And the rumors that I’m los­ing my mar­bles are flat-out false. It’s true I talk to P.D. So what? I’ve always talked to dogs, and I know I’m not nuts because no dog has ever talked back to me.

Okay, so the hors­es talk to me, but that doesn’t mean any­thing. It’s not a crazy Mr. Ed thing. The hors­es don’t vocal­ize. They con­verse tele­path­i­cal­ly, and they only express sim­ple con­cepts, like “You brought the car­rots, right?” And, ”If you didn’t bring the car­rots, why are you here?” I’ve nev­er had an extend­ed com­pli­cat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a horse. Except that time when Jack­son asked me what was wrong and I told him I lost my car keys and he told me to look in the lit­tle refrig­er­a­tor in the tack room and so, of course, I thanked him when I found them in there and he said you’re wel­come, but there’s noth­ing strange about that because Jackson’s an excep­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent horse, and it only hap­pened that one time.

So, no thanks, Dr. Zeke! I’m not buy­ing what you’re sell­ing. Here I am at 76, a full year beyond your drop-dead date, and I’m in great shape phys­i­cal­ly (although gen­er­al­ly exhaust­ed and some­times seri­ous­ly injured), men­tal­ly as sharp as a razor (even if I don’t always know where I am, why I’m there, or why my car keys are in the refrig­er­a­tor), and plan­ning to bank a ton of mon­ey I’ll save on birth­day can­dles with my lol­lipop wafer over the next quar­ter cen­tu­ry, when at 101 I will remain dogged­ly and defi­ant­ly Not Dead Yet.

I was four­teen years old, and we’d just moved into the par­son­age in White Hall, Vir­ginia. I was walk­ing down the road to Wyant’s Store when a girl about my age came speed­ing up behind me on a fire-engine-red bicy­cle and almost ran me down. I jumped into the ditch as she raced by, laughing.

When I got to the store, she stood in the back by the drink machine sip­ping an orange Nehi. She tucked a strand of brown hair inside a head-scarf tied tight­ly to her chin and flashed an imp­ish grin at me. That grin led me to believe she’d brushed by me on her bike as a tease. I hadn’t made any friends in White Hall, so I approached her. “Hi,” I said.

She burst out laugh­ing, sprint­ed up the aisle, and bolt­ed out the door.

“What the heck?” I muttered.

Old Mr. Wyant, stand­ing up front by the cash reg­is­ter, shook his head and smiled. “Don’t mind Daisy, son. She’s pecu­liar. Runs in her family.”

Mr. Wyant was being kind. “Tetched in the head” was the phrase most peo­ple used to describe Daisy and her kin.

She wasn’t a teenag­er like I thought. She was 24 when she chased me off the road with her red Schwinn Phan­tom. She was still rid­ing that bike at age 34 ten years lat­er when I left White Hall. In all that time, I nev­er saw her with­out a scarf cov­er­ing her head. One of the girls from the church told me Daisy always wore scarves because she didn’t wash her hair. And although I saw Daisy laugh and gig­gle many times over the ten years I knew her, she nev­er spoke a word in my pres­ence. I don’t know if she couldn’t talk or just had noth­ing to say.

She lived in a trail­er in the woods with her moth­er, Lot­tie. Lot­tie was in her mid-fifties, short and stumpy with a weath­ered face, hearty laugh, and wide smile sport­ing a gap where her upper front teeth should have been.

Some­thing about her made me uneasy. I told one of my friends she gave me bad vibes. “You can’t let your guard down around her,” he said. “She’s the kind would sneak up on you in your sleep and cut your throat.” He based that com­ment on a rumor that Lot­tie sold Daisy’s favors to a man, and when he wouldn’t pay, she cut up his face with a penknife. I doubt this was true. There were lots of sto­ries about Lot­tie and Daisy, but they were usu­al­ly short on names and details.

Daisy’s father, Ray, and Lot­tie split up before I moved to White Hall. He lived by him­self in a lit­tle shack near Moorman’s Riv­er. He was in his six­ties, tall with a mel­on-sized bald head, round blub­bery face, flab­by chest, and bul­bous bel­ly that jig­gled when he walked. They say he was a good farm­hand in his day, but he no longer worked by the time I came along.

Peo­ple made fun of him for his curi­ous afflic­tion. About every ten sec­onds, he would emit a “Teep!” It was con­tin­u­ous, like a per­ma­nent case of the hic­cups. I don’t know how he got any sleep.

My bud­dy and I were squir­rel hunt­ing one after­noon when we heard a strange sound com­ing from the oth­er side of the hill. We hid in the brush and watched as Ray passed by us, stalk­ing small game with a shot­gun, try­ing his best to be stealthy, but even with his lips closed tight, the Teep came through. “Bup … Bup … Bup.”

Daisy’s old­est broth­er, Mar­tin, was a rail-thin scare­crow with dark sunken eyes. Most days he ped­aled a rick­ety bike to the old Pied­mont Store and stood in a cor­ner, star­ing vacant­ly into space. When spo­ken to, he replied, “I’m f‑f-fine. H‑h-how y‑y-you?” That was about as far as he could car­ry a conversation.

He suf­fered from an afflic­tion sim­i­lar to Ray’s, but his was episod­ic and it came on like a seizure. We were work­ing in the fields on a hot after­noon load­ing hay bales on a flatbed wag­on when one of his spells hit him. He began to roll his shoul­ders and duck his head. Then a raw, hoarse cry, like the honk of a goose, came up out of him from deep down in his chest. It repeat­ed about every ten sec­onds. Again and again. Martin’s spell last­ed about fif­teen min­utes, then died off as inex­plic­a­bly as it start­ed, and we all went back to work.

I saw him strug­gle through sev­er­al episodes over the years. They fol­lowed the same course. When they were over, we all went about our busi­ness and act­ed as though noth­ing had happened.

One of Daisy’s old­er broth­ers, Ned, worked full-time as a farm­hand. He lived alone in a room over a shed on the farm. In 1964, I worked beside him all sum­mer. He couldn’t read or write and got most of his infor­ma­tion from the radio. He was amazed that I knew so lit­tle about world affairs. He patient­ly explained to me that Hitler was alive in Argenti­na plan­ning a Nazi come-back, that the end of days would come in 1968 at dawn on East­er morn­ing, and that the Russ­ian launch of a cos­mo­naut into orbit was fake. “Don’t seem like you know much with all your book learnin’,” he said, curl­ing his lip. Despite my igno­rance, we got along well, and I learned a lot from him. He was a knowl­edge­able, reli­able farm­hand; he worked hard every day; and he paid his own way all his life.

Daisy’s youngest broth­er lived in the trail­er with her and Lot­tie. He usu­al­ly went out­side only at night when no one was around, but I caught a glimpse of him in a rare day­time sight­ing. My pal and I were rab­bit hunt­ing on an old fire road in the woods when Daisy and a tall lean man with coal-black hair came around a bend. At the sight of us, the man cried out and ran away, and Daisy fol­lowed him.

“That’s Jack,” my pal said. “He’s afraid of people.”

A cou­ple years lat­er, Lot­tie and Daisy showed up at the par­son­age, sob­bing. “Please help us, preach­er,” Lot­tie said. “We don’t have no one else to turn to.”

Dad drove down the grassy road to the trail­er. When he opened the door, blood spilled out on the steps. Inside, the shot­gun was still propped between Jack’s knees. When the sher­iff and med­ical exam­in­er were done, Dad cleaned the floor and walls as best he could, and Lot­tie and Daisy went back to live in the lit­tle tin box where Jack had killed him­self. They had no place else to go.

These old mem­o­ries lay dor­mant in the shad­ows of my mind until last week. Research­ing a White Hall fam­i­ly on Ancestry.com, I stum­bled across Daisy’s obit­u­ary. Since then, I’ve been think­ing about her and the oth­ers in ways I was too imma­ture to con­sid­er when I was a boy.

I won­der now how they got along. Fed­er­al wel­fare pro­grams were just get­ting off the ground back then; Virginia’s Depart­ment of Social Ser­vices was in its infan­cy; and non-emer­gency health­care didn’t extend to peo­ple who couldn’t pay. Jack’s psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der, Ray’s afflic­tion, Martin’s seizures, and Daisy’s arrest­ed devel­op­ment all went undi­ag­nosed and untreat­ed. I don’t recall any­one even sug­gest­ing they should receive med­ical attention.

The White Hall com­mu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed a safe­ty net of last resort. When they got in big trou­ble, some­one always helped them out, but day to day they had to make do on their own with all their dis­ad­van­tages, and yet all of them, except Jack, lived into old age. Lot­tie and Ray died of nat­ur­al caus­es in 1980, Mar­tin in the 90’s, then Ned, and Daisy last in 2006.

It seems to me now that per­se­ver­ance in the face of immense obsta­cles and myr­i­ad dis­ap­point­ments should have earned Daisy and her kin some respect, but most peo­ple back then, includ­ing me, didn’t give it to them. Daisy’s obit­u­ary implies she went to her grave with­out gain­ing it.

“Daisy Lee Hatch, 69, died Novem­ber 6 at Martha Jef­fer­son Hos­pi­tal. Born March 8, 1937, in Free Union, she was the daugh­ter of Ray­mond and Char­lotte Hatch. She will have a pri­vate service.”

Three sen­tences. Thir­ty words. Terse, dis­mis­sive. Noth­ing about a life span­ning sev­en decades. No men­tion of sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives or mourn­ers. My guess is pri­vate ser­vice meant no service.

Daisy and her fam­i­ly lived hard lives. I wish I and oth­ers had treat­ed them bet­ter when it would have done them some good, but those days are gone and can’t be changed. All I can do now is remem­ber them, tell a small part of their sto­ry to keep their mem­o­ry alive, and hope their ghosts will par­don the thought­less­ness of the boy who lived in the par­son­age six­ty years ago.

At dusk in Decem­ber, I ride Wil­son along the base of a steep moun­tain. We’ve slowed to a walk, but he’s strug­gling, his breath com­ing in short bursts, vapor jet­ting from his nostrils.

Zoey walks stiff-legged on the ground beside us. She looks up at me, her eyes watery and tired. Unable to go on, she sits down to rest. 

I rein Wil­son to a stop and dis­mount. He low­ers his head, breath­ing hard. I stroke his neck and rub the star on his fore­head with the palm of my hand. 

I call Zoey. She comes to me and stands at my knee, her legs trem­bling. I kneel, pat her head, and scratch her ears. 

A cold shad­ow falls over us as the sun goes down behind the moun­tain. I stand and lead Wil­son and Zoey through a grove of live oaks, their branch­es claw­ing at an indi­go sky, giant bony fin­gers cling­ing to the dying light. We emerge from the trees into an open field where scat­tered desert flow­ers still bloom, lit­tle islands of gold, bur­gundy, and rus­set in a sea of gray brush. 

We walk along a well-worn trail. Wil­son and Zoey fall behind. I stop and look back. The night is com­ing on. “Don’t give up. Stay with me.” They try to quick­en their pace, but they’re old and slow. A cur­tain of dark­ness slides across the val­ley toward them, and I can’t hold it back. 

I awake and sit up on the edge of the bed, still inside my dream. It takes me a while to shake it off. I wipe my eyes and stare out the win­dow. First light. Anoth­er day. “There’s still time,” I say, hop­ing it’s true. 

I bought Wil­son on the cheap five years ago. He came with no pedi­gree or papers. The sell­er said he was 12, but the vet thinks he’s well into his 20’s now.

He’s a good horse. He tries hard to do every­thing we ask of him. Last year arthri­tis ate into his spine, and we took his sad­dle off for good. See Rid­ing Wil­son for the whole story.

On a rid­er­less out­ing a few months ago, he hurt him­self try­ing to dash up a hill. After­wards, he walked with a sidewind­ing gait, his back legs unsteady. The vet pre­scribed steroid pills to reduce inflam­ma­tion. “The time will come when I can’t help him any­more,” he said. He told me to move Wil­son into the barn’s front stall so the hauler’s winch could reach him when that day arrives. 

“I’ll move him,” I said, “but I want to buy the old boy as much time as I can.”

I mixed the med­i­cine into Wilson’s feed dai­ly. The sidewind­ing walk didn’t go away, but it got bet­ter. Janet, my horse train­er and good friend, put him on Equine Senior Feed to help him hold his weight. Always a home­body, he seemed con­tent in his corral. 

Then some­thing went wrong with his front legs. He flinched in pain with every step. He stared vacant­ly into the dis­tance with rheumy eyes. He didn’t respond to my voice or touch. 

The vet thought he had lamini­tis, a dis­ease where the cof­fin bone inside the hoof pulls away from the hoof wall. It’s extreme­ly painful, and there’s no cure. He sched­uled a vis­it for the next day to x–ray Wilson’s hooves.

Visions of the hauler and his winch kept me up all night.

At dawn, I went to the barn to feed him. He stood in the cor­ral at the bot­tom of the hill. Nor­mal­ly, he would run up to the barn to be fed, but that morn­ing he stood still as a stat­ue, root­ed to the ground. I called him. He didn’t move. I hal­tered him and pulled him up the hill. Every step was tor­ture for him. Twice he almost fell. Fight­ing back tears, I tried to come to terms with the heart­break­ing deci­sion that would be best for him.

That after­noon I crouched beside the vet in front of a portable x–ray machine star­ing at images of the inside of Wilson’s front hooves. “They’re worn down,” the vet said. “Too short and too shal­low. It’s like he’s walk­ing on bro­ken glass with bare feet.” Despite that, the vet was encour­aged. “We caught this ear­ly. There’s a good chance we can treat it.” 

The vet pow­er-drilled met­al screws into Wilson’s front hooves to attach thick wood­en horse­shoe-blocks to them, then wrapped them in plas­ter-cast tape. When he was done, I led Wil­son back to his stall. Wear­ing Dutch clogs, his first steps were awk­ward, but his gait soon smoothed out. His per­son­al­i­ty came back. He nudged my shoul­der for pets and strokes, and when I came to feed him, he ran across the cor­ral, kick­ing and buck­ing like a young horse.

The vet will take off the clogs after six weeks. It’s not a sure thing his hooves will heal by then, but the ear­ly indi­ca­tions are pos­i­tive. It looks like Wil­son will out­run the dark­ness for a while longer.

Mean­while, Zoey did not fare as well. We feared she would pass away in Sep­tem­ber with a kid­ney ail­ment, but she recov­ered. See Zoey’s Song for that story.

In Novem­ber, our fears returned when she fell and couldn’t get up, but when the vet gave her shots for arthri­tis, she rebound­ed again.

Then, on New Year’s Day, she suf­fered a grand mal seizure. I can’t bear to describe it here oth­er than to say it was hor­ri­ble and heart-wrench­ing to watch. While I searched fran­ti­cal­ly for a vet who would help her on the hol­i­day, she had two more seizures, short­er and milder than the first. I final­ly found an emer­gency facil­i­ty in Cul­ver City, and my son-in-law helped me take her there. It’s an hour’s dri­ve, and I thought she might die in the car on the way, but she made it. 

The emer­gency vet sta­bi­lized her with anti-seizure med­ica­tion. An ultra­sound revealed an enlarged heart with an immi­nent risk of a fatal heart attack. The next day our reg­u­lar vet put her on heart medication.

Each morn­ing and evening I mixed eight pills into her food, and every four days I gave her the arthri­tis shots. I was wor­ried about pump­ing so much med­ica­tion into her, but it worked, and mirac­u­lous­ly she bounced back yet again. Her arthrit­ic pain eased; the seizures went away; and the heart pills seemed to make her stronger. She woke up every day wag­ging her tail. She took two long dai­ly walks morn­ing and after­noon, and she was active and alert. 

Six weeks lat­er, she had two mild, short seizures two days apart. Both times she recov­ered quick­ly and act­ed as though noth­ing had hap­pened. We increased her anti-seizure medication. 

On Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 17, at dawn, she and I went out to get the paper. Fig­ur­ing she was too old and infirm to run off, I didn’t leash her. Mean­der­ing around the front yard, she sud­den­ly put her nose in the air, and the hair on her neck stood up. I was too far away to restrain her when I saw the coyote.

Bay­ing and sprint­ing after him like a young dog, she chased him up our neighbor’s long, steep dri­ve­way while I ran a dis­tant third behind them. When I final­ly caught up to Zoey at the top of the hill, the coy­ote had fled. Zoey turned around and trot­ted back down the hill, look­ing ener­gized and proud about pro­tect­ing her turf.

I’m glad we got to share that last big chase. She looked so brave and strong. 

That after­noon at four o’clock I found her in my home office. She’d rolled over on her side and passed away peacefully. 

If you’re blessed, once in your life you form a spe­cial bond with a dog that’s dif­fer­ent from all the oth­er dogs you loved. You know what she thinks and feels, and she has that same sense of you. It’s a mag­i­cal con­nec­tion, deep, warm, lov­ing, soulful.

I’d like to believe it can’t be bro­ken, even by death, but I don’t know if that’s true. All I know is I still feel it, and I always will.