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Book Review: The Last Gift of Time

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Book review The Last Gift of Time-Life Beyond Sixty
by Ruth Mountaingrove

A The Last Gift of Time-Life Beyond Sixty by Carolyn Heilbrun, Dial Press, New York, New York, 1997, 225 pages, hard cover $19.95, paperback $12.

Carolyn Heilbrun, born in 1926, begins in her preface to tell us that at age 40 or 50 she decided to kill herself at age 70. Then when she was healthy at age 70 she moved her date to age 75.

This reminds me of the movie Harold and Maude where Maude has set her exit for 82 while still in the prime of her life and succeeds in her plan, despite Harold's desperate actions to prevent it.

The Last Gift of Time is a series of essays on many different topics. E-mail is one of them. Heilbrun feels quite strongly that people older than 65 should have computers in their homes and be connected to the world by e-mail.

When Heilbrun was 68 she bought a barn on a windy hill with lots of acreage, beautifully finished inside by former owners. She would spend her weekends in solitude there while her husband would continue on to their other house after dropping her off. Well it didn't quite work out that way. One essay is about a dog, also acquired in her 60s after the house. And that doesn't quite work out as she thought either. She says, "There is no commitment that does not bring with it its own tensions and it own ambivalences." A wise thought.

There is one on "Sex and Romance," in her opinion much overrated for those older than 60-friendships are much better. She speaks of the value of women friends in her late years.

In "On Not Wearing Dresses," she tells how at 72 she began finally to wear the clothing she had always wanted to wear - men's clothing - comfortable flat soled shoes, pants and coats with enough pockets, an androgynous look. At the time she was no longer a college professor. Her essay on "Living With Men" underlines what she has thinks about men and the "hundred points they're born with." She speaks of how irrational the "rational" sex is, as only women who have lived with them 20 years or more can know.

The last essay, "Mortality," contains the advice to live each day to the fullest. This Carolyn Heilbrun does.

Ruth Mountaingrove also writes the Electronic Highway column for Senior News. Her e-mail address is ruth3@northcoast.com..

One-time article Copyright 2000 by Humboldt Senior Resource Center .