Last quarter of your life may be the best one played

The game of my life is in the last quarter.

I don't know when that quarter started. I got up to get a snack from the refrigerator, and when I returned it had already begun.

Occasionally life offers an overtime period - in sports they call it "sudden death" - but when you're 75 years old you're definitely in the last quarter of life.

That's OK. I don't usually watch sports until the last quarter anyway. The real drama, the last minute heroics, the game-winning plays are in that final quarter. The earlier part of the game is just setup.

This last quarter is when life becomes real. I can look back and better evaluate what was important and what wasn't in the first three periods. And with the clock inexorably ticking down, each play takes on added significance.

When that happens, some people choke. For others it focuses the mind, and they see more clearly what counts and what doesn't. They have a better perspective on the past and a clearer sensitivity to the future.

I know now that I won't be remembered as a famous preacher, another Billy Graham. Nor will I be an Ernest Hemingway or Donald Trump.

Yet some things I've done have left their mark. Many people from years past still refer to me as their pastor. That's a good feeling. So is the fact that five other fathers and I made a Little League organization in central New York State much more kid friendly.

But now it's the last quarter. An increasing number of activities are no longer physically available to me. Tennis is one. Getting down on the floor and romping with children is another.

Replacing them are some new plays, particularly good as game closers. I've discovered the creative enjoyment in woodcarving. I became a regular columnist for this newspaper. I can drink a leisurely cup of coffee with friends, enjoy music and art, and read.

I have time to volunteer for activities like the Rotary Club and the Batavia Additional River Crossings Commission that will make my community and the lives of other people better in small but still important ways.

I will continue to find the humor in life, including my own. A person who can't laugh at himself has a very inflated opinion of his importance.

I want to spend more time enjoying my wife, my son, and my granddaughter. Harry Chapin's song "Cat's in the Cradle," with its description of people too busy to relate to each other, has haunted me for years. Now, in the last quarter, I see an opportunity to change that in my own life.

And while I am increasingly conscious of the clock winding down, I'm less likely to turn everything into a crisis. Many things I face in this last quarter are repeats in one form or another of earlier challenges. I survived them then, and I will survive now. A lot of people who are younger and still playing earlier quarters don't have that luxury.

Along with legendary sports writer Grantland Rice, I believe "When the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the game." I want to play the game in such a way that when the final whistle is blown the Scorer will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

That's my game plan.