I had the thought occur, recently, when thinking about my 50th birthday — it just happened! I’m old now! — that, now that I’m past my first half-century, that I’m firmly in the second half of my life. That thought was then immediately followed by my brain going, well, it’s not really that likely that you’re going to live until 100 statistically, and then I got very, very depressed.
It’s not the realization that I’ve probably been in the “second half of my life” for at least a decade or so already, as much as that’s an oddly sobering thought. (I wonder, if I’d had that realization when I turned 40, if it would have changed anything about me? Would I have become a different person in some strange attempt to “live life to the fullest”? Perhaps we’ll see now that I’m here, now.) Instead, it’s the even more sobering realization that my parents didn’t live that far into their 60s, which means that if my life follows their trajectory, I’m actually inside the last 20 years or so of my life.
To be fair, neither of my parents were especially healthy, and my mother didn’t die of natural causes, anyway. (Complications from surgery, in case you’re wondering.) I would like to think that, as unhealthy as I may be, maybe, I am still healthier than either of them and try to make better choices, and so perhaps I’ll have a lifespan closer to my grandmother, who made it all the way to 80 before dying in another accident that leaves me suspicious of the bad luck of my family in later years.
But still; I suddenly am aware that, for whatever reason, my family traditionally hasn’t been especially long-lived, a fact that’s hovered around the back of my head for some years and now sits front and center with a new sense of urgency following this landmark birthday.
Maybe it really is time for me to start looking after my health more.
