I saw a super old guy on the street, using a walker, hunched over, just trying to make it to the other side, but moving so so so slowly. His family was trying to help, speaking encouragement, but the guy was taking unbearably long… I started thinking, “That could be me one day. It was my Grandma Rose after all. What makes me think I’m special, that I am exempt from such a fate, from the fate of aging and death in general?”

I share my grandmas gene’s, my dad’s too — both dead — clearly those wont keep me ‘safe’ from death. Is it that I feel like it hasn’t happened to me yet, so it won’t happen at all? To that point, plenty of things haven’t happened before in my life and then they do –I had never moved away from Miami till I did, never had a job till my first one, never lost a parent till my dad died, etc. First times happen all the time in life, something not having happened yet offers no surety or security that it won’t happen in the future.

Plus, its not exactly true that I haven’t started the march towards dying yet. I am already aging, that is clear, I already show signs of decay: I have a tooth in my mouth right now that is killing me, it is decayed, worn and cracked from use over time. That tooth is painful proof of aging. If I saw a ball speeding down an incline,  I wouldn’t say that, because it is only halfway down the hill, but not at the bottom yet, it won’t ever reach the bottom at all; that would be crazy. In fact, I’d say the opposite, “the ball, uninterrupted, will definitely continue to fall, the way all things in nature subject to gravity do.” Isn’t the law of impermanence, change, decay and degradation, a law even surer than the law of gravity?  The rest of this body will definitely decay the way the tooth is decaying right now,  the way the cancer riddled body of my dad decayed, and the way the heart of my  grandma, that finally couldn’t pump any longer, decayed.

Perhaps I don’t really understand and internalize this truth of my mortality because I think I am special, loved and therefore protected. Isn’t a sense of safety, and a belief in my own exceptionalism, what I have looked to countless friends and loved ones to confirm for me? But here is the problem: I loved my dad beyond words. He was my person, my sun and moon. No one was greater or more special in my eyes than my father. That love broke my heart when my dad died, but it surely did nothing to save my dad, to exempt him from illness and death. Eric loved me so much, he stood by helpless to either save my father or to space me, his beloved, the pain of such a profound loss. If I couldn’t save my father and ERic can’t save me, there is no one in the world that can save or be saved from sickness and death.

Is it the fact I think I control my body better than others? I am more more fit, more disciplined? But what about that actor from Spartacus –he was fit beyond belief, beautiful, talented, just beginning to peak in his career — dead of a rare cancer at 40. Is it that I’m a “better person”? LP Thoon died, Mae Yo was in an accident — whatever my definition of “good person” is, don’t those two top the chart?  And even moments of my life I have felt  “I’m at my best”,  like before we left Cali, I wasn’t spared the pain and loss of moving. Is it money? I just visited the cemetery where Leona Helmsley’s mausoleum is — all her wealth bough her fine marble and stained glass, but it didn’t make her any less dead . Plus the tooth tells it all: I work hard to brush and floss and care for my teeth. I don’t skimp, using my money to pay for the best dentists and treatments. Has effort or attitude or wealth saved my teeth?

The truth is, the reason I don’t truly understand the fate before me is that I choose to ignore it. Despite endless, daily, evidence from others, the world, even my own body, I  just look away. I count my tooth as an exception to my general invincibility, once pulled it is forgotten. But forget or not, ignore or not, it doesn’t change the truth; this body will age until death just as surly as a ball falling will fall till it hits the ground.