For some reason on Sunday, I clicked onto a seemingly obscure article in the New York Times about a writer’s retreat in Tuscany. Maybe it’s because I’m in what can be the dreaded editing, refining and finishing phase of another book project.
The article was about the Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte. On her estate, among orchards and olive groves in the Italian hills of Tuscany, she hosts a writer’s retreat visited by world-famous authors. But what caught the attention was not the A-listers who stayed and wrote there. It was 97-year-old Beatrice discussing the current construction of a three-story library on her property.
People who are 97 are considered optimists for buying green bananas at the store and here was one who is building a library.
She said, “There are old people who only think about the past… You have to do things. There’s always a future, even if it’s very small.”
Immediately, thoughts went to people whose lives inspired my own.
This time of year our thoughts often turn toward the past. Today would have been the 97th birthday of my father. One year ago this week, we lost Franco Harris unexpectedly. My mother is still going and is always looking toward the future.
But the end of one year conjures thoughts of mortality, of the finiteness of time that is part of our shared humanity.
Some live to be 97 and others die young, but time waits for no one. And when your time comes, if you’re lucky someone whose life you touched will write your life story as an obituary. The first line of that is the lead of your life story, a line defining the apex of your life’s work.
And the question every day that lingers for me is this: “Has the first line of your obituary already been written?”
For those born to successful or famous parents, you start with a preliminary first line of your obituary before you can even talk. It’s not easy to get that line rewritten. I’ve always understood that.
But never was it made more humorous than on a brutally cold and windy November night in 1995. The night before a Penn State game at Northwestern, Greg Schiano and Tom Bradley were watching high school games in Pittsburgh and I was watching a high school game in Columbus.
The small King Air prop picked them up before stopping to pick me up. As the plane took off and bounced wildly in the turbulence, Greg said “Well I’m just glad we made it to pick you up. Now if the plane goes down, with you on it, we at least become a front page story. If it’s just Tom and me, it’s just two Penn State coaches. With you on board, it’s three Penn State coaches, including Joe Paterno’s son.”
We had a good laugh as we did make it safely to Chicago, arriving a tad purple from the rough ride.
But it was a reminder of that lead story of my life.
For someone like Barack Obama or George W. Bush, chances are the leads of their life stories have been written. Barring one of them being elected pope or curing cancer being a former president is probably a tough summit to surpass.
But for the rest of us, there is always more we can do. My father was always looking to the next challenge. How can we make this team, this program, this university better? For my mother, she gets up every morning looking to add to a long and incredible life of service, committing herself to raising money, planning events and serving Special Olympics Pennsylvania, Penn State, the Lion Pantry on campus and Mount Nittany Medical Center.
And for Franco Harris, certainly the Immaculate Reception, being a Super Bowl MVP and getting into the NFL Hall of Fame all were things that were a major part of his life story. But until his last days he was getting up, looking forward and trying to scale new heights in service to others. Most would rest on the laurels of one of the great NFL careers of all time, but he was a restless man who acted in ways to right the wrongs of this world and to ease the paths of others.
Maybe Franco and my father shared a determined stubborn streak passed from Italian mothers. Maybe it was because they both married women in Sue and Dana who were themselves driven to make the world around them better every day.
And that takes us back to where we began. Life stories of people in motion, regardless of age. A 97-year old woman building a library, an 84-year old coach raising money for academics at Penn State, an NFL legend creating a lasting legacy impacting others and an 83-year old woman pushing to make her university, her commonwealth and community better.
We cannot outrun mortality. But we can run every day to leave behind a life story that gets written and rewritten every day we are on this earth. And ultimately the impact we have on others is how the mortal among us do in fact outlive their own mortality.
