My fatherdied of a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died within eleven hours.Aside from the initial headache there was no pain and no lingeringillness. However, for the two years prior to his death he was not ahappy man. He had been advised to give up smoking with the resultthat his weight zoomed from a lean 198 pounds to a paunchy 250pounds! His cataract surgery left him with thick glasses that hecould not manage and he had lost most of his natural teeth. His vigorwas gone and little things troubled him, things that ordinarily hecould have handled without difficulty. He was in Shakespeare's sixthera of Man's life span.

Shakespeare's"As You Like It" (2.7 139-167):

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the canon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Now in mycase at age 90, I am beginning to appreciate my father's problems. Itis interesting that I really never felt my age until I incurred anaccident to my right leg and simultaneously developed a refractoryupper respiratory infection. This combination left me weakened andtremulous and with a weight loss of 14 pounds. Slowly I amrecuperating, but Shakespeare's sixth era is not far from my mind.And so it goes.