Someone recently told me I spend a lot of time thinking about dying. I don’t think that’s quite right. I mean, yes, I do pay attention to it — but that seems reasonable. After all, as much as I’d like to believe the Grim Reaper lost my address, I am in my eighth decade now. I’m planning.

I’ve made some of my after-death arrangements so my family won’t have to face those decisions in the midst of what I assume will be deep grief. I’ve chosen to be cremated, with my ashes placed in an urn with a sapling embedded in the cremains — one that will eventually grow into a tree, making my future self a haven for birds, shade and possibly a squirrel or two.

I’m also working on organizing my finances, and we’ve begun the slow, sometimes overwhelming process of clearing out what we no longer need from our home. (OK — more honestly, we’re thinking about clearing out what we no longer need from our home). It’s daunting to sort through all the paraphernalia once considered essential and release them. Some of it feels like layers of identity packed in boxes, souvenirs from past versions of myself.

So, there’s that.

That said, I’ll admit to a minor obsession of late. I’m 70 years old — the age at which my father passed. It feels like a threshold. And while I know many people outlive their parents without giving it much thought or have long since done so, I’ve discovered that it matters to me more than I expected. Deep down, I want to outlive him — not out of competition, but maybe out of hope. Hope for continuity. For healing. For proving to myself that life can stretch farther. Maybe it’s just the human impulse to persist, to keep going. Who knows, maybe it’s just good ol’ fear of dying. I don’t entirely understand it — but I also hope my sons will outlive me, too, when their time comes. That just seems like the natural order of things.

Recently, I realized I’d crossed that invisible line — the day I lived longer than my father had. Using an online calculator (and a morbid sense of curiosity), I figured out he lived 70 years, nine months and three days; 25,845 days in total. I plugged that number into another website, starting with my own birthdate as day one, and it advised me the day I would reach the same point was (fanfare please): July 4, 2025. Independence Day. A bit on the nose, I’ll admit — but oddly poetic.

On that day, as I wandered the local Fourth of July festivals, I remember thinking, “On this day in my father’s life, he got up, went about his business, made plans — expecting to finish them tomorrow or next week. But that next day never came for him.”

It did for me.

And now, as you read this — whenever that may be — I’ve surpassed it. I’ve stepped beyond the end of his story. Every moment I live now is a new chapter he never got to write, a page he never turned.

This brings up an even more “trippy,” quasi-spiritual, slightly “woo-woo” realization: my father is now my junior. I am older than he ever became. Each day I wake up, I enter territory he never lived long enough to experience. There’s something tender and strange about that. Call it a soft reversal of our roles.

In some inexpressible, mystical sense, I now find myself in the position to offer something back to his spirit — advice, perhaps. Comfort. The quiet assurance that life does, in fact, go on past where he left off.

Quite literally, the father has become the son.

And if that weren’t enough synchronicity for one reflection — today is the day my father would have turned 100.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Scott “Q” Marcus is the CRP (Chief Recovering Perfectionist) of www.ThisTimeIMeanIt.com. Get his latest rants and thoughts by following him (or just reading) on Substack at scottqmarcus.substack.com.