About Schmidt

You’ve got to appreciate what you have while you still have it. I spoke with my grandma on the facetime for three hours or so today. We’ve always been very close — she was instrumental in my day-to-day upbringing — and we talk regularly. In the three years since she’s been widowed, our talks have become increasingly more existential. She is constantly reminded of her age and that of everyone she has ever known. She has mentioned how, at her age, everyone she knows seems to be dying and I can’t deny how traumatic it seems to be for her. She’ll breathe deeply and look off to the side. Someone fell down the stairs and is in hospice, someone else was diagnosed with terminal cancer, someone else went to bed and simply never woke up. She fell and fractured a rib last fall and this made her introspection of her mortality even more inescapable. She’s spent her 85 years amassing countless memories and experiences that, like anyone, made her who she is. But, like the titular Warren Schmidt in this movie, she has lived long enough to be effectively sidelined as she watches the world to go on without her. She spent her life working and raising a family and has now reached the point where she had to stop and now she is just… waiting. After our call, I couldn’t stop thinking about this movie. Schmidt is reminded of his own mortality after his retirement and subsequently the unexpected death of his wife. He shares stories of his past to little interest of others. I find the scene in the tire store to be especially compelling. The location holds a great deal of sentimentality for him, but the clerk couldn’t care less, and why should he? Schmidt wants to share his memories and experiences with others so that when he dies, a piece of him will live on in the minds of others. Humans have this fundamental and inherent fear of being forgotten. The parallels between him and my grandma are undeniable. And that makes me sad. You reach a certain age where you suddenly realize you are old and before that gets to really set in, you start to lose the ones you love and it forces you to wonder when your time will come. Aging is inevitable and our legacies are what they will be. All we can do is live in the moment and to cherish what we love. That is a lesson I can always count on my grandma (and Warren Schmidt) to remind me of.