With chapters and a title like that, you could assume that Douglas is either preparing for a second career as an undertaker or is as death-obsessed as any character in a Woody Allen movie.
Instead he assures a visitor that this is what people his age think about, that and whether they have done enough good in their lives.
“When you reach 90, you are living on the house’s money,” Douglas says shortly after he bounces – thanks to new knees – into the den of his Beverly Hills home, his white hair slicked back over his head.
The star of nearly 90 films looks almost as fit and trim and ready for a fight as when he was in his 20s and played a boxer in one of his early hits, “Champion”.
But, as he says in his book, he sees a different Kirk Douglas: “Here I am staggering into my 90s, hard of hearing, hard of seeing and with an impaired voice (from a stroke). Had I died in my 40s would I have been remembered as the Viking dancing across the oars? Maybe.”
Some of his thoughts are toss-away jokes with a kernel of truth, like if you thought 85 was old, wait till you hit 90 – that’s really old.
Others are serious and some are extremely painful memories of the people lost on the road to longevity.
For example, his close friend Burt Lancaster is never far from his thoughts, and he still gets a laugh recalling how Lancaster once introduced him at a dinner: “Kirk would be the first to admit he is a difficult person. (Pause) I would be the second.”
When Lancaster had a stroke, his wife asked Douglas to accept an award for him, but she never let him see his friend again because of Lancaster’s weakened condition.
“I had my first guilt about being alive when I was in a helicopter crash and two young people were killed – one just 18 years old and getting ready to go to college. I was in hospital and operated on for my back but I was 75 years old. Why was I alive and this young man dead, when his life was just beginning?” he said.
It is not a question that Douglas will have answered any time soon. Nor will he get over the loss of his youngest son Eric at age 45 from a drug overdose. Douglas and his wife Anne visit his grave twice a week.
“At age 90, you look back and realise how egotistical you were in your youth, how wrapped up you were in yourself and your career. Then you look back and realise that the most important thing you can do is do something for the children.”
Now in the twilight of their lives, Douglas and his wife have opened scores of playgrounds for disadvantaged youth in Los Angeles.—Reuters