I have a friend with whom I can speak honestly, and openly and without fear or wariness or hesitation. Eve Marko is a  writer of fiction and non-fiction, a social activist and animal lover. She is also a Zen teacher. We see each other every few months, and talk on the phone every few weeks.

Friends like this are very rare, I think they happen once or twice in a lifetime.

Eve and I have begun a dialogue that is important to me, and that I have wanted to have for some time. She makes this possible, it is an important dialogue, about some of life’s most essential elements – health, aging, perspective, life, and death.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting for one little dialogue. In recent years, some people I know have begun asking me – almost always in a sorrowful and worried tone – how my health is. The usually look at me with great solemnity and concern, and say “Jon, how’s  your health,” or “Jon, how are you feeling?”

I always have the feeling they expect me to keel over at any moment. It’s not a good feeling.

I suppose a normal person would simply accept this question as a matter of concern and compassion. But the question always makes me wince – something people never seem to notice – and I tend to answer it abruptly, usually by saying “fine, I’m fine.”

I never would ask anyone how their health is, certainly not in a social setting or with other people around. And although I sometimes write about my health, as I write about my life, I never talk of it, or want it to be a continuing part of my conversations.

To me, asking people about their health in that way just because of my age is like asking someone who is overweight how their weight is. It seems like something I shouldn’t ask about, not something I should.  And it certainly isn’t something I want to talk about with people.

I have been around older people often enough to know that health and medicine is often the primary topic of conversation, a way in which older people come to define themselves, and are defined by others. By their conversation, I see their world shrinking. In my conversation, I hope to see my world expand.

The other night, on the phone, my friend Eve ended our conversation – I much look forward to these conversations, I rarely get to speak on the phone with anyone these days, and I love to talk on the phone – by asking about my health.

She said as we were about to hang up, “Jon, how’s your health?,” and I had my usual response, I tightened up and said, “fine, my health is good.” And despite the fact I have diabetes and heart disease and some retinal issue, I do consider myself healthy and well. I have plenty of energy, I work hard and long hours, I am busier than ever before in my life, and to better effect.

The next day, I e-mailed Eve and asked he why she and other people ask me about my health. Is it because I had open heart surgery? Because I am getting older? Was I broken or foolish to be irritated by the question, to feel somewhat intruded upon? Was i wrong in thinking that if a friend should know that if I had serious health problems, I would tell them and wouldn’t need to be asked repeatedly. I don’t wish to be defined by my health or the health of other people. Am I wrong or odd for feeling that way?

I have a history of being annoyed by the best intensions of other people. And I do know that I am crazy.

Eve began a dialogue with me which I know will continue and hope will continue, because it is important to me. I speaks to the way in which I mean to age and also the way in which I come to see myself in relation to the world. To my identity.

“I always ask friends and family about their health,” she replied. “It’s a mark of how precious they are to me, and how much I recognize now that serious illness really changes one’s life in a significant way. I don’t mean chronic illnesses, I mean serious life-changing developments. After Bernie’s death (her husband) I made a point of asking this question whenever I catch up with folks.”

Eve is one of those people I listen to and respect. On her blog, she has brilliantly and with extraordinarily sensitivity chronicled her experience with grief and loss. And she explained it clearly and beautifully, as I knew she would.

Yet we still didn’t see this in the same way.

I wrote back to her to say that I am always uncomfortable when people ask me about my health, and wanted to write about this. I see it as a personal and private thing, even though I share my most important medical experiences with my readers, as I promised I would do. I can write about it more easily than I can talk about it.

I so appreciate why she is asking, yet I told her that what I was feeling from her message was that I am not Bernie, nor am I anybody else. I could drop dead tomorrow, get hit by a bus, or have my heart fail at any time. Life does not ask our permission to take us away in one form or another.

We will all leave the world in our own way. But we will all leave the world, or as Paul Tillich wrote, “we will all end.” I don’t need any courage to die, I wont have much to say about it, but I do need courage to live.

Bernie’s illness is not reflective of my life, one way or the other, and I realized that I do not wish to be defined by anyone else’s sickness or illness, or even their death. Our friendship is apart from that.

I can talk with Eve about anything, which is the precious gift for me, and I see I need this dialogue, it is important to me. I  fear that this question is a part of what I call “old talk,” since no one ever asked me about my health when I was younger. Not once.

I know who I am and where I am in life, but in my own head, I do not dwell on being old. Medical issues and medicines are a part of being older, I accept them. Like keeping the car running, or getting my teeth cleaned.

This is a big issue and a big question for me, and I know it can’t be resolved in a couple of e-mail exchanges or even a phone call or two. There are things about aging that I can’t control, and there things about aging that I can control, and one of them is the lament and hand-wring and pity-me psychology that creeps into people’s heads, and that I often hear from people my age.

I am not ready to see my life in those terms,  I hope I will never be ready.

Eve Marko does not think that way, and I hope to continue this dialogue with her, for me, and hopefully for other people who might read this. I know now that pain is inevitable in life, suffering is a choice.

I will not speak poorly of my life, I know it is listening.

We will all end in one way or another, and I accept that as well, although I do know that if Maria died before me, I would almost certainly see the world in a different way.

I respect life, and as a hospice and therapy volunteer for the elderly, I respect death as well and come across it often. I have no illusions that aging or dying will be simple or easy, not in America, where every human experience is a profit center for someone, to be prolonged and mined as long as possible.

I believe “old talk” is enabling talk, the creation of a culture that sees death in this awful, secret – and yes, intensely profitable way. They sure do want old people to see themselves as helpless and even useless – and fragile –  so they can draw them into a way of life they neither want nor can ever really afford.

I don’t like that story for me.

We each tell our own story, and my story is not about seeing aging as the end of things, but yet another beginning. I’m with Grandma Moses. Life is what you make of it, at any age. I’m just beginning to learn how to live.

My idea of getting older is that doors and gates are opening to all of the time.  I believe that “old talk” kills the spirit, the mind and the body.

So I will continue to not ask people I know how their health is, and I hope they will not ask me.

For me, this is a conversation that needs to happen.