Mortality

I walked with a sick friend yesterday. We set out before the snow began and by the time we’d finished, two hours later, it was coming down.

My friend has cancer and his doctor says this could be his last winter.

That’s something else that is happening in midlife: People in my circle of friends have started getting sick. Once you've lived for 50 years or more, people you know (and love) become ill. It’s just the way things work.

Nothing makes us feel our mortality more than losing friends who are close in age. Oddly, nothing makes us feel as young. When people my age die, I feel especially saddened at how much life they had—and I have—left to live; when people much older than I die, I feel artificially buffered by the years between us, as if age were the only cause of death.

My friend, who was diagnosed a few years ago, could very well die before his 50^th birthday. He is unbelievably calm and accepting about this. And he is committed to getting the most out of every moment.

Mostly, he walks. Those of us who know and love him join him when we can. He doesn’t mind talking about his cancer, although he seems just as happy to take a break from it.

My brother Steven, who died nine years ago at age 59, welcomed any opportunity to not talk about his cancer. Not discussing it was his way of keeping it out of the room. If he kept it out of the room, he believed he could protect himself from it, although in his last years, the disease had consumed sizable chunks of his body. Only at the end of his life, did Steven want to talk about his dying and even then, once the conversation was started, he’d redirect it.

As my friend and I walked, I wondered if I will turn my face away from the imminence of my own dying or await its arrival as one awaits the snow.