BOSTON -- It was an eerie coincidence, said some, a fine piece of symmetry, said others. Charles M. Schulz died in his sleep just as the last "Peanuts" was loaded onto the last trucks for the last home delivery. His life and his work were completed on the same day, sharing the same national curtain call.
For half a century, until cancer forced retirement, Charles Schulz was the scriptwriter, the producer, the director for a repertory company of small, imaginary characters who never changed, never became trendy and never grew dated.He penned more than 18,250 strips that ran seven days a week. He drew them when his hands were strong and his line was sure. He drew them when a tremor made it hard to hold the pen.
Long after his income had topped $30 million a year, he got up every morning, drove to breakfast, then to his studio at One Snoopy Place, worked, went out for lunch and back to work. Only once -- under orders -- did he take off more than 10 days. Finally, the creator and the comic strip, the life and work, ended, together.
His friend Lynn Johnston, creator of "For Better or for Worse," said the end was "as if he had written it that way." His son Monte said, "I think maybe he decided that his true passion was in the strip and when that was gone, it was over."
In one of the obituaries that talked about Charlie Brown and Linus, Lucy and Snoopy, Schulz's biographer said he "spent a lifetime perfecting failure." After all, as Schulz himself once wrote, "All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away."
But "Peanuts" wasn't really about failure. It was about perseverance. It was about a hopeful moon-faced boy holding a kite string, day after day, until the rain forced him indoors. It was about his characters' perseverance and his own. It was about life and work; life as work.
What do we make of a 77-year-old war veteran who had set off for war just days after his mother's death, who described his lifelong anxiety as that of a dog chasing after the family car, never knowing if they would ever return? What to make of a man who once asked of his characters, "Good grief, who are all these little people? Must I live with them for the rest of my life?" But stayed with them until he died.
Indeed, Schulz once said "Drawing a daily comic strip is not unlike having an English theme hanging over your head every day for the rest of your life." But another time he wrote that he did cartoons for the same reason musicians composed: "They do it because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's why I draw cartoons. It's my life."
Which was it? A theme paper hanging over his head? The meaning of life? Is it a shame that he didn't retire? Or a blessing that he came to the end, work and life still entwined?
There is something in my generation that looks on perseverance, on work as life, with admiration, envy and unease. On the one hand, work -- 30-year, gold watch work -- reminds us of the baker in the old Dunkin' Donuts ad dragging himself to the kitchen: "Time to make the doughnuts." On the other hand, it reminds us of a Claude Monet, poised to do his greatest art only after acquiring the skill and hands of a 75-year-old painter.
Schulz's World War II generation stuck to its last, out of anxiety or grit, luck or guilt. The twentysomething generation skips from one work world to the next, reinventing themselves as swiftly as the Internet.
But my middle generation holds two competing views: One sees the courage to persevere, and the other sees the courage to change. One admires those who find the right fit -- Monet at 75, if that is not too grandiose a dream -- and the other admires those who break out at 50, 60, 70 to reinvent themselves.
Last month, Nebraska's 56-year-old Sen. Bob Kerrey wrote himself two letters about his future. One letter explained he was going back to private life; the other that he was running for re-election. "The first one," he said, "made me smile." Kerrey chose the smile.
Not long before his death, Schulz realized, "That little boy is never going to kick the football." In a work and life that ended on the same day, I hope that the cartoon characters made Charles Schulz smile as much he made the rest of us smile.
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com