Drop Dead Healthy

The Finish Line

I GET A WEIRD JOLT every time I log onto Skype nowadays. The address book pops up, and there, on the front page, is “Grandpa Ted.” Even odder, his number has a green circle next to it, meaning that he’s somehow logged in, as if they have Wi-Fi in the afterlife.

I always think of clicking on it but decide it’d be too depressing when he never picks up.

I’m noticing these cues more and more, not just on my computer, and not just for my grandfather. As I get older, the city is filling up with morbid little landmarks of dead friends and family.

I’ll walk by Nick & Toni’s, an Italian joint, and think about how I ate ravioli there with an ex-girlfriend fifteen years ago. She suffered from depression and committed suicide last year in her “Obama mama” T-shirt.

There on the corner, that’s the deli where I chatted with Bob, the tech guy at Esquire, who died of a heart attack at fifty-one. I could do a macabre walking tour of Manhattan.

Today, I’m taking a trip into the center of it, my grandfather’s old apartment on Sixty-first Street. All the grandkids are encouraged to stop by to see if there’s a keepsake they want before it’s all sold or stored or given away.

My mother unlocks the door of 11-F, and I smell the familiar Grandpa odor: a mix of mustiness and Johnson’s baby powder. He used to pour it into his shoes every day like it was milk in cereal.

In some ways it looks like he just went out for a roast beef sandwich. The black rectangular magnifying glass he used to read with, it’s lying on the living room table. The plastic chess set with see-through cubic pieces is all set up, ready for him to make an opening gambit. His Dell computer with the huge keyboard is waiting for him to start tapping out e-mails.

As we walk to the bedroom, I step on a plastic chicken drumstick that one of his great-grandkids left under the kitchen table.

In the bedroom, large cardboard boxes cover the bed. One of his daughters had labeled each box with a black Sharpie: “Books 1,” “Books 2,” “Photos 1,” and so on. Occasionally the label has some charming editorializing, like the box that said “New York: The City That He Loved,” filled with a biography of city planner Robert Moses and an award from the Urban League.

I’d come in search of one item: the suit my grandfather had worn to Julie’s and my wedding. It was no ordinary suit. It was a red gingham jacket and pants, and it was bold and awesome and reminded me of something Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin’s Czech brothers would have in their closet. I don’t know if I’d ever have the courage to wear it in public, but I liked the idea of it in my apartment. It would be a checkerboard-patterned reminder of a life lived fully.

I swing open the closet door. There’s lots of eye-squintingly bright clothes, but no sign of the suit.

“I think it was so worn out that somebody threw it away,” says my mom apologetically.

“What about this?” She pulls out a hanger with a blue-and-red flower-print shirt. It’s no gingham suit, but it’ll suffice.

There are dozens of things left on my healthy to-do list. I haven’t joined a chorus (which has been linked to reduced heart disease). I haven’t eaten Japanese daikon radish or geranium extract, which is supposedly anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, anti-everything-bad-in-the-world. I haven’t returned to the Sleep Clinic for my follow-up CPAP exam.

And the body parts. What about the spleen? And the liver? And the esophagus? I haven’t devoted a month to any of those.

But in the name of mental health, I have to put an end to full-time, nonstop healthy living. I promised my sons. They’ve been waiting patiently for two years to share cupcakes with me during birthday parties.

Am I the healthiest man alive? I’m certainly a lot healthier than I was two years ago. I went for my final exam at EHE and found out I’d lost another half pound, ending at 156.5 (total weight loss: 16 pounds). I’d gone down two belt sizes. Dr. Harry Fisch told me that my lipid panel numbers “are so good, they’ll give you a heart attack” (HDL: 48, LDL: 62). I more than halved my body fat percentage. I can now run a mile in less than seven minutes as opposed to not at all. I have a visible chest.

I’ve hopefully boosted my longevity, despite my stubborn refusal to move to Okinawa or Sardinia. I’ll let you know in a few decades.

But the healthiest in the world? Who knows. Probably not. For one thing, I’ve been so busy with food and exercise, my life has teetered out of balance. I’ve skipped movie nights with my wife and missed pre-K presentations.

Dr. Bratman would say I’ve contracted a bit of orthorexia. Lately, I’ve been avoiding most fruits, except the bitterest one, grapefruit, afraid they are too highly glycemic.

So that’s it: My days of full-throttle healthy living are over. Instead, I’ll be switching to a healthier approach to health.

I’ll incorporate much of what I learned.

I’ll chew more. I’ll walk more, and hum and pet dogs. I’ll wear my noise-canceling earphones. I’ll stop to smell the almonds. I’ll write e-mails on my treadmill and run my errands. I’ll reframe life’s horrible situations and outsource my worries.

I’ll floss my teeth and breathe from my stomach. I’ll eat my Swiss chard and quinoa. I’ll drink ice water, meditate, and give abundant thanks.

I’ll try to stay married and have not-too-infrequent sex. When I exercise, I’ll do High-Intensity Interval Training, alternating between sprinting and walking every minute. I’ll avoid blue light before bedtime.

I’ll follow fitness expert Oscar Wilde’s advice: Be moderate in all things, including moderation. There’s room for immoderation. Celebratory feasts can be healthy, and the occasional triathlon as well.

And I will try to have more days like June 19, the final day of my project, when Julie and I schlep the boys to Brooklyn to see a minor league baseball game featuring our local team, the Cyclones. I’ve walked 8,304 steps so far, many of them to get to the stadium. I’m in the open air, breathing in those phytoncides. I’m getting just a little sun exposure for my vitamin D. I’m watching baseball, which may lower blood pressure.

I’ve done some aerobic activity, including tossing a ball in a booth near the stadium. A radar gun tells you how fast you pitched.

The whole family tried it out. The radar malfunctioned when Zane lobbed his ball, and registered that he threw at ninety-four miles per hour. “Get that kid a contract with the Mets!” said the guy running the booth.

And right now I’m walking back to our seats, holding the little hand of my pitching prodigy, his touch suppressing my level of the stress hormone cortisol. Zane’s hand is sticky, since he’s currently at work on his one permitted treat for the day, a stick of blue cotton candy.

“Do you want a taste, Daddy?” he asks. He holds it aloft for me to see, a bright Q-tip of spun sugar.

I hesitate. Yes. I guess I do. Just a taste.