Just before I turned 40, a friend (who is just a couple of months older) became a grandmother. What’s the big deal? I was born when my grandmother was 40? But at the time, my kid was 8 and I was up to my ears in elementary school activities. Yet a contemporary of mine was a grandmother. It gave me pause. I wasn’t a kid any more.
It’s 9 years later. Mortality has lurked in the background, till last night. It was orientation night at my kid’s school (classes start tomorrow) and we ran into another friend. Her boss (also a friend of mine) had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. Bruce isn’t that much older than I am - maybe 5 or 6 years. He’s got a daughter who’s a year older than mine, and a son in middle school. He should be home today, and with luck, he’ll be a grown-up about it and listen to his doctor.
I know heart attacks can happen at any age, and I know Bruce wasn’t in the peak of health. Still, it was a slap upside the head. In my family, all but one member of my grandparents’ generation have died. Several of my parents’ generation have died. Soon, I will be among the elders.
I could wax philosophically on the “Circle of Life” and all that rot, but I won’t. It’s not earth-shaking. It happens every day - people are born and people get sick and people die. But every once in a while, one of those births or deaths elbows you in the gut, and knocks the wind out of you.
And life goes on.
Hits me in the gut on a regular basis.
Weekly, I see guys younger than me being wheeled in by EMT’s who are doing CPR on them. I can tell from their mottled faces that they’ve been down too long and some young wife will be without a husband.
I get paid for what I do and I try to form a callous, but it hits me just as hard as it does everyone else.
Yup. It’s got my attention, all right.
Quasi
Mortality got my attention big time when my younger brother died at the age of 45. Now that was a big ol’ fwap upside the head!
I was really surprised to read that FairyChatMom actually remembers when she was forty. 
[sub]If we ever meet FCM is soooo gonna put a hurting on me. I just know it.[/sub]
Quasi, I don’t know how you can do work like that! I’m glad there are people like you who can, but I’d be a basket case if I had to deal with people dying on a regular basis.
swampbear, if you don’t want to wind up as one of Quasi’s customers, you just better watch them cheap shots. I have a heavy purse and I’m not afraid to use it!!
FCM was forty? I don’t believe it. I thought people like her were ageless, with timeless, flawless, esquisite beauty.
[sub]can FCMoose come out to play? ;)[/sub]
My stepdaughter is getting married in the near future. My only limitation I have placed on this union is that they not reproduce before I’m 30. I refuse to be a grandmother before I’m 30… it’s just too much for my synapses to take.
-BK
A friend of mine had two quite serious strokes recently.
She’s only just turned 31.
bobkitty, a friend of mine in her early 30s just married a man who has a married daughter and a 4 y/o grandson, so she’s an instant mom and grandmom - whew! And FCMoose is sitting on my night stand feeling lonely - she hasn’t partied in quite a while!
Tir, that’s very sad and frightening! I always think of stroke as an old person’s disease. I hope she recovers.
Small hijack:
Strokes in the young seem to be more common that people think. My sister’s bf (all of 27 or 28) had one earlier this year. He’s pretty healthy, mountainbikes, works for Home Depot moving stuff around - and woke up one Monday not being able to speak.
Scary stuff.
As for me, mortality hit me when I realized I am now older than my mom ever was. (She died at 31 - I’m 33 and counting…) But on the plus side, her father’s now 87 and still lives independently!
I haven’t had so much an encounter with mortality as with sudden age.
Two and a half years ago, when I turned 46, I didn’t feel appreciably older than I did when I was in my late 20s. I’ve always been a very outdoorsy, active person - I’ve always done a lot of bicycling, hiking, that sort of stuff.
Then a few weeks after that birthday, I got the flu.
Ever since, I’ve been hit by attacks of the chills when I’ve asked a bit more than usual of my body. It’s made it hard to get any serious exercise in, and as a result, I’m not in nearly the shape I was just a few years ago.
I’m hoping I’m finally past all that. It’s been nearly 3 months since the chills last hit. And last Saturday, I had a good 24-mile bike ride over up-and-down terrain in 95° heat, and felt nothing but normal tiredness afterward. (This is exactly the sort of thing that would have brought on the chills as recently as this spring.) So maybe, just maybe, I can finally have my body back, and go back to being me.
A friend of mine had a stroke last year. He was 36 when it happened. This is his second stroke - when he was in college he had one and was in a coma for 6 weeks. He made a full recovery the first time. I wish I could say as much about this last one. A year and a half later and he is still very aphasic, although is mobility is getting better.
I guess I got my fwap when my cousin died a couple years ago after a rejected liver transplant. The first of my generation to die. All my grandparents are gone and my father died three years ago.
StG
Yup. Been nearly 18 months since my friend died. Heart Attack after smoking cigs for 10 years. I’m older than him by 2 years, which is scary.