The Power of Getting in Touch with Your Own Mortality

“But in this world, nothing can be certain except death and taxes.”
— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

I was lucky, in a strange sort of way, in that one of my best friends died when I was in my early thirties. He was a world-class athlete and only 42 years old. It quickly brought home to me, when I was at an age when few people think of death, how fickle life can be. Most of us pretty much take our lives and our health for granted until we get ill or someone close to us dies. Since Dave’s death 30 years ago, three more of my good friends, one man and two women, have died of various forms of cancer before they reached 50. Randy, Trish and Donna all had a whole lot of life still in them. Only Randy smoked; the other two had healthy lifestyles and just got bad draws in the gene pool. There is not much you can do about that except get regular checkups and try to nip health problems in the bud.

Even when the prognosis was fatal, none of them expected to die. Two were convinced their faith in God would save them, the other that natural healing would. All were making big plans for their futures, but the future never came. Donna never got to see Hawaii, although my wife and I practically begged her to go, even offering frequent flyer miles, and hotels to make it easy.