I don't think I changed my view of death so much as I just grew up My obsessing about death was a childish behavior that I engaged in as a...child. As I grew just a bit and became interested in other things, baseball, bb guns, water balloons, I forgot to worry about dying. My grandfathers were both really fine men. My paternal grandfather was born in a soddy on the prairie in eastern Kansas, he was a Methodist minister for nearly sixty years, he'd been a circuit rider and preached in tents and out in the open and finally a sucession of churches big and small. My maternal grandfather was killed in a railroad accident in 1920, crushed between two boxcars (he was a brakeman for the A.T.& S.F) Some years later, my grandmother married his cousin (same last name) so her married name stayed the same. So the man I grew up with as my 'grandfather' was actually my step-grandfather is there such a thing? He was a WWI vet, stonemason, curmugeon. Following Amistice Day, he insisted on being discharged in France and spent several years travelling around Europe, learning his trade and came home on a freighter, in steerage. He was given to salty language and parsimony. I don't know how one writes. Said another way, I don't think what I know is worth passing on. I suppose I like old films for many reasons. I like seeing the old things that remind me of my childhood, the cars, the buildings, especially Los Angeles the way I remember it. I like film noir quite a lot. But I like pretty much all other genres, too. Amazingly, I have friends who settled in Europe after the service, I look forward to seeing them again. Also I have a niece in the military presently serving in Germany. I hope to see some little part of the Tour de France, drink some wine, argue with a frenchman, wear a beret, piss off a balcony. just the usual stuff. I hope to see the great migration in east Africa. I don't think it will last too much longer. But mostly I want to look back on my country from a long ways away again. I find I need some physical distance every once in a while to see the whole of it. My mother taught me (or tried to teach me) that I'm frequently too smart for my own good, that you are known by the company you keep and, when in doubt, mind your manners. I also learned I could have been a better son. My son has taught me that we all need to make our own mistakes and that there are some people for whom I'd lay down my life. literally. pretty fucking amazing. If the rewrite of the Constitution fell in my lap, I'd clean up that second amendment using simple English and complete sentences and I'd codify our right to privacy. (and I'd be sorely tempted to place further specific limits on the executive)