Always Disturbing
I am coming to realize that as one gets older one truly does become more aware of death. It has been happening and it has hit me again. I heard from my brother on Monday that a high school friend of mine was killed in a tragic lawnmowing accident when his lawn tractor tipped over on him on a slope at his home. I went to the local paper's website and read his obituary it was like getting hit over the head. Especially when I read his birthdate...1948...the same as mine. Of course it was. We graduated together.

I remember noticing this about older people in the past. It seemed like a morbid curiosity about deaths. "Did you see that so and so died?" they would ask each other. "Yes. Wasn't that a shame?" would be one of the possible responses. "How awful for his family" or "What a blessing after all he's been through" would usually come next.

Perhaps part of the reason for all this was that as long as you can be having the conversation, it isn't about you. It is also because you are nearer to that possibility for yourself than you might like to admit. Unless some HUGE, really HUGE medical breakthrough happens in the next few years, I know that I am far more than halfway through my life. Probably even closer to 65-70% through. I passed my mom's age at her death over ten years ago. I will pass my dad's by the end of this summer.

And that is hard to accept or even understand.

It raises lots of questions about what one has gotten out of life- and in my book- what one has given back. It brings to mind life-lists of things you haven't done yet and would like to and things that you will probably never get to do. It makes one take a look around and say, "Wow!" because such a view can have a non-morbid side to it, a non-depressing side, if one is willing to accept its reality and move on.

For I am also coming to realize that as one gets older one truly does become more aware of life. Listening to The Story on public radio last evening, I heard a doctor who herself had been afflicted by an almost fatal illness. She should not be alive. As an oncologist she faces such issues day in and day out. As a result of her own near-fatal illness she said that she has a greater awareness that death is always around. It is always in the room. But that doesn't stop her.

I guess we end up back to the adventure beginning when control ends that my poet friend Larry said. It is only when one can give up control- or the sense of control that we can truly find the adventure of life.

That doesn't make someone's death any less disturbing, sad, or depressing. We miss people. But the hope is that in that awareness of ultimate powerlessness we can also find the joy of living in the days and moments and times we have.