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Twenty-five friends gathered with me a few months back to celebrate my 60th birthday. I had well-wishers in my home who touched many periods and aspects of my life. There were some from my last workplace, some from classes I took at local universities, some who had sailed with me; here were couples who my wife and I had gotten to know over the years, some reaching back to when we first came to the United States in 1968. There was a cousin I'd known since I was 5. And there was the inevitable Irish crowd, a rag-tag group of immigrants like myself that frequently assembled to create a cozy little bit of Ireland over here. Poems were rendered, and as the night grew old, heart-aching songs of Ireland filled the air. It was a rollicking night of fun.

But when the music stopped and the last guest went home, I was struck with the dismal thought that the next time this band of good friends would come together would most likely be for my wake. Same songs, maybe new poetry, but I would be the dead guy in the box. Looks like now my death will be my next great act.

So far, my life has followed a relatively predictable path. I have skipped along the various stepping stones of life, rearing my kids and pursuing a career. I now own a tidy little abode and an ocean-wise sailboat, and I am already the grandparent of five American citizens -- all potential U.S. presidents. But what's next for me? I don't even have retirement to look forward to; I cashed in that chip three years ago. I have this vacuous feeling that there is nothing more left to do.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not ready to go just yet. My doctor hasn't told me to start getting my affairs in order. Yes, I have diabetes, our family disease, but medications and diet seem to keep all that in order. I have a heart murmur, but it's not so loud that it keeps me awake at night. My doctor says it comes with my age. Nor am I ready to bring all this life to an end by my own hand. I treasure each day that I am alive and I would never commit such a desperate act, even though I still don't know exactly how to spend the sovereigns and doubloons that later life offers me.

Actuarial tables say that, having reached my 60th birthday, I should expect to live until I am 81. Unless, of course, I am smote by a heart attack, or a stroke or one of the more vicious forms of cancer. Failing such bad luck, I should be around for another 20 years. What on earth shall I do with all this free time?

Society does not give us a clear script of what to do with those outer years. Yes, there is bingo, quilting and wintering in Florida, but these are just filler pieces, activities to while away the time. I am more concerned with finding the essence of life, an inner purpose, a central theme that I can bind my life around.

Most of us follow a well-defined path from childhood to adulthood. In a clear and predictable sequence, we learn to crawl, to stand, to walk, to talk, to stop pooping in our drawers. We work our way from elementary to high school and learn about the world-at-large in an established order. Even as adults in the work world, we are encouraged to move in the direction of what the larger society determines is "success."

The steps on the career ladder are often clearly marked, beckoning some of us up.Along the way we marry and beget children, preferably in that order, and settle down to a predictable life of diapers, child care, home mortgages, minivans, truculent teenagers, college tuitions and eventually, the much-desired empty nest. It's a prescribed passage, each step in proper sequence. Scratch any young or middle-aged couple at a suburban cocktail party and you'll find underneath that they are somewhere along this time-worn path.

But the map becomes blurry after we pass 60. Here the path enters terra incognita. The guideposts have been taken down. The script runs out. Society, so stringent in its rules for earlier life, seems to forget about us now. Retiring from work is often equated with retiring from life. After 60, we have to pick ourselves up like an old discarded shoe and make our own steps, or hazard just lying there, eventually curling, drying up and falling apart.

In my high school Latin class, we delved into Cicero's "De Senectute," or "About Old Age." Here, in the form of a conversation between 83-year-old Cato and two young men, we learned of Cicero's attitude toward advancing years. The only pleasure of old age that sticks in my mind was that of Romans in their togas lying along couches at a feast, enjoying the fine art of conversation, imbibing wine in never-empty goblets, and visiting the "vomitorium" occasionally to make room for more. I never liked Latin, and the idea of living a long fruitful life to end up with this as the best thing offered tended to turn me against old age as well.

As an adolescent in that Latin class, I certainly looked forward to growing up; that seemed the best of all worlds. I would become big and strong and knowledgeable, have money and freedom. I could decide when to go to bed, and when to come and go, when to have dessert. It all looked so bright, an ever-widening vista. The future held my potential. I gladly reached toward the oncoming days and years.

So now that I am 60 and have arrived at the foothills of old age, what does my world look like? My view forward is truncated. Most of my life has run. My past is a reservoir full of memories, but my future is just a shallow pond filled with unknown hopes. And as I peer forward into the future, I can just discern the lurking shadow of death. It's there. I can't avoid it no matter how I turn away, no matter how much I smile and laugh. Awareness of one's own demise, with all its attendant existential angst, is supposed to order the mind. That's good for the man scheduled to be executed in the morning. But what about poor fellows like me who may have to wait another 20 years before the lights go out?

And the future is murky. The view is getting narrower. Things are closing in. Eyesight is fading. Teeth are falling out. Hearing and hair lines recede. Movement of the body is harder. The breath struggles after a climb. And there is more to come. Joints will lock up. Memory will fade. Balance will become unsettled. Pain will inhabit the bones. The bladder and the bowels will develop their own minds. Not a pretty prospect.

So what purpose will be served living out the rest of my life? In the grand scheme of things, why does nature even bother to keep us around?

If we view ourselves as an essential link in a chain between one generation and the next, we menfolk fulfill our usefulness as soon as we sire our first child. Our women have nine months longer until they deliver their replacement. In the cold eye of the selfish gene, we are only here to replicate its offspring, to pass on its intricate code to a new organism. At least nature is kind enough to let us humans stay around to guide our children forward in life, unlike the male praying mantis, who isn't even given a chance to get dressed and go home before he gets his head chewed off. However kind nature is with our human mating habits, she still insists on turning off the biological clock of our breeding partners in their forties. She doesn't trust us to try anything new in our later years.

But I am encouraged by the words of William Maxwell, novelist and former fiction editor of the New Yorker, who died recently at the age of 91. He said that he expected old age to be a time of diminishing, but instead he found it to be one of great fulfillment.

Surely fulfillment must be tied to finding an appropriate role and focus in one's later years and developing a purpose around which one can intertwine one's life. Erik Erikson, a student of lifetime development, has identified eight phases that we pass through from cradle to grave. Each phase has a choice. In the penultimate phase that coincides with early old age, the individual can choose "generativity" over boredom and stagnation. By generativity, he means being concerned with guiding the generations that follow. It is motivated by a search for some form of immortality -- "I am what survives me."

By passing on our acquired knowledge, values and awareness, we can act like a climber who drops back a helping hand to his fellow travelers as they make their way along the hard rock face of life. Therein lies the secret of a fulfilling life after 60. I must go now, as I want to spend time with my grandchildren. Katie, my eldest granddaughter, wants to learn to sail. Then there is more to pass on to the others. I will survive in their memories. Relating to grandchildren is like casting a piece of oneself way into the future.

Brendan Donegan, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1940, and trained as an architect, worked on Expo '67 in Canada and was involved in the planning of Columbia. His retirement in 1997 has given him more time to indulge his passion for sailing, inherited from his father, who drowned at sea when Donegan was 7, and his grandfather. Donegan and his wife, Mary, have three children and five grandchildren.

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