How to use "decades" in a sentence

In each subsequent meeting, one or the other would show up to take story notes on their latest draft, while the missing partner would always have been waylaid by an emergency of one kind or another: a broken washing machine and a flooded laundry room, the sudden-onset illness of a cat with symptoms suggesting (to me) demonic possession, the death of a beloved aunt, the death of a beloved uncle, the death of a beloved neighbor (I began to worry that merely by associating with these women, decades would be shorn from my life span), migraine headaches, and an unfortunate encounter with an angry Big Foot in a long line at the DMV