Ninety-nine years old, Harry has accepted the inevitable, and is approaching the end stoically. He is concerned to put his affairs in order, and not leave anything undone that should have been. Truth-be-known, he wants to die before Bernice, but is ashamed to admit it. His two greatest fears are to become mentally or physically incapacitated, and left ‘blubbering nonsense, or having people wipe my ass for me, or both.’
Two considerations give rise to his abhorrence of ‘living life after death’: he’s front ending the shame and embarrassment he imagines at being a ‘hundred year old, drooling baby in diapers’; and he’s determined not to burden Bernice and his daughter Jenny with his care. Those are the spoken reasons he would give for not wanting to ‘make a big deal’ about reaching 100. The underlying truth, however, is that his passion for life is waning.
He will confess this to Buddy in Depth Perception, “I’m not living anymore, I’m just existing, and I want to end it.” In that chapter Buddy learns what ‘wisdom’ is and what it means to be ‘an elder’. Harry doesn’t even admit it himself, but he has become those things, but in a society that doesn’t really value or honour them, and at a point in his life where he may suddenly be unable to live up to the responsibilities they confer.