I have a terror that often enters my mind.  It’s a gnawing worry that someday I will no longer be useful, and that I’ll have nothing to do.

This is an age-related worry.  I see others who are a little older than I who can no longer be active, who can’t work or drive, and who are confined at home or in assisted-living facilities.  They watch TV.  I hate TV.

What will I do?  I could be like Elbert Fisher.  He read romance novels.  I shudder.

I could be like my father.  He played the futures, buying and selling on the futures market, and lost thousands of dollars in the process.  He lived alone after Mom died, and was desperate for things to do.  I can see now how truly grateful he was for the daily visits he got from my sister and me.  We were a welcome relief from his diet of futures trading, naps, and boredom.

Dad wanted things to do.  While he was still able to drive he went from my place to Tim’s to Ellen’s looking for activity and ways to help.  I’m ashamed to say that his “help” was not appreciated, and that when I wanted to move the cattle, I would watch for him to go down the road and to be out of reach before I’d start the move.  He could no longer move quickly, and was more often in the way than not.

Is this why my kids no longer include me in their projects?

I might end up like Annie Tanner.  As bishop I visited her in the rest home.  She could no longer stand, care for herself, see, or hear.  She must not have been able to sit, either, because she was always lying in bed.  I knelt down and put my mouth beside her ear, and loudly asked, “Annie, what do you do all day as you lie here?”

“Well, after I wake up and have my breakfast,” she said, “I sing all the hymns I can remember.  Then I recite all the poetry and scriptures I’ve memorized.  That takes about two hours.  And then I lie here.”

I’ve had a wonderful spring and summer.  As soon as the melting snow made it possible for me to do so, I went to work outside.  I pruned and trellised the raspberries.  I got the deer fence constructed from the yard to the other side of the pond.  I worked up the garden, planted it, cared for it, pruned the trees, leveled the driveway by hand, pruned and trellised the grapes, mowed the lawns once a week, repaired and painted the house, spent every Sunday going to church, every Tuesday preparing and giving institute lessons, and every Wednesday going to Boise and serving in the temple.  I had callings at the group level (home teaching eight individuals or families), at the ward level (Sunday School president earlier, and now ward mission leader), at the stake level (institute instructor and young single adult adviser), and at the temple as an ordinance worker.

Almost two-and-a-half years ago we returned from our mission to Vanuatu.  We were busy there.  I was moving just as fast as I could all day long.  We were needed.  It was a wonderful feeling to be needed.  I’d leave our flat with two objectives in mind to be accomplished that day, and the Lord would place person after person and situation after situation in my way that needed attention.  Many was the day that I tried to keep track of the number of daily things that I accomplished before I returned home, but I always lost track at about 24.  It never ceased to amaze me.  I was the Lord’s servant, and He used me.

I’m still the Lord’s servant, and He’s still using me; but what if I get old?  What will I do?

Boyd K. Packer said, “We all need someone to do for.  When that is unfulfilled as a need, we become lonely.”  (Ensign, Nov. 1978, 8).

Elder David B. Haight reported that “A few years ago, a prominent man in California said to me, after learning that Sister Haight and I were leaving our affairs and going to Scotland to serve our church, ‘I wish my life had been lived in such a way that someone would ask me to do something really important.’”  (Ensign, May 1987, 61).

We could apply to serve another mission, but Marjorie is of the opinion that we’re needed more here.  I have my doubts.  I see winter coming, and confinement to the house.  I’ll be all right this winter because I have projects that will occupy me, but what about next winter, and the next?

This winter will be spent updating my general conference index and my series of Danny’s Books.  I have the October 2017 conference to index, and then I want to get the rest of the stories from general conferences organized into Danny’s Book, Volume VI.  When April conference comes around all I want to have left to do is to index it, extract the stories therefrom, and to finish The Speakers’ Index to 50 Years of General Conference and volume VI of Danny’s Book.

During the winter I also expect to keep adding articles to my current book under construction, “I Have No Greater Joy.”  I expect it and the other books to all be complete by the end of June 2018.

And then what will I do the following winter?  Marjorie says that I could write.  But I can only write so much.  I can only write when inspiration comes.  It’s difficult to force it.  What I need is an idea for a novel—a long story that I could work on every day.

And I should get into family history.  This winter I plan to get Andrew H. Adams and Lydia Temperance figured out, and to do their temple work.

Beyond that I think it would be a great goal to trace all of my lines back to the immigrant ancestor, and to reflect upon the reason why each was brought here by the hand of the Lord.  (2 Nephi 1:6).

I probably have enough to do to keep myself busy as long as I have my mental capacity, but the idea of boredom and loneliness is terrifying.

I need to look around and see who is currently in that situation.  That’s something that could occupy my time, too.

Maybe I should install heat in my shop.  Maybe I could get into woodworking and wood-turning in the winter.

And what if I reach the time when I can’t physically take care of our raspberries, garden, and park?  I wish the Bradfords could be occupying this house when that time arrives, and could be caring for the place; but where would I be?  Should I be building a little retirement house at the end of our driveway?  I feel guilty living in this big house with all of its rooms while Heidi has a houseful of kids in Haines and a half-dozen visiting kids all summer and every day after school.

Marjorie loves her home, and doesn’t want to leave it.  Neither of us wants to afflict our kids with having to care for us in their homes in our old age.  What will become of us?

Thankfully, we’re in the Lord’s care.  All things will work together for our good, and for the good of our children.

Until I reached it, I never dreamed that old age could be such a hazard and worry.  I think that I need to pay attention to Atticus’ attitude in the book, “To Kill A Mockingbird.”  He was fond of saying, “It’s not time to worry yet.”