Gender Differences and Dying!

We have a few men in our family network who do the holiday countdown. You know the sort? A week before your holiday they look at their watch or the calendar and say, ‘This time next week we’ll be in sunny…’ This of course sends you into a wild panic as you realise all the things you have to do before you can leave, when you were perfectly calm, prior to his statement.

So, you arrive in your sunny destination and you’re enjoying your mojito on the beach or your frothy coffee in a café somewhere by the river, nice and relaxed at last, and that same man says, ‘this time next week, we’ll be back home.’ He’s gone and spoilt things now. You know he’s thinking about work and you don’t want to think about any of that until the very last minute, when you’re back at home, embroiled in the catch-up washing and you have no choice!

In the same vein, and perhaps it’s just my family and friends, but it seems to me that men and women view death differently too. That man who counts down his relaxation time, also hates birthdays. He sees a birthday as one year closer to death, instead of a celebration of his birth and the time he’s survived on planet earth. The older he gets, the worse he is, to a point that he thinks a lot about dying. His unhappiness about it gets him down and thus, he is not making the most of the time he has left.

Women seem to worry more about the practical side of ageing rather than death itself. You know, those extra wrinkles that have appeared and the aches and pains that keep occurring for no reason. If I ever think about dying, it’s in a practical way, such as, I’d better make a list of where I’ve squirrelled our savings, in case something happens to me, so he knows where it is. Or, as I put it to my grown-up offspring, ‘All being well and no nasty illnesses, your father and I only have about 10-20 years left on this planet and we want to make the most of it, so please accept this gift of money towards the purchase of your own homes!’

Whichever way you look at it, I believe that the old clichés about time flying and life being short, are still valid and we shouldn’t wait for an illness in the family or a life changing accident to make us realise this, we should live for today and not dwell on the inevitable. We are going to get old and wrinkly, we are going to die, but we can’t change it. Life is a gift, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so enjoy that gift while you have it.

Is it different in your house? Or have you too got one of those annoying holiday countdown husbands? It would be nice to hear from you.

PS. Be the first to receive latest posts subscribe here.

Image courtesy of iosphere/FreeDigitalPhotos.net