Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994 TAG: 9404110143
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joe Kennedy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I ate lunch with a friend who has had surgery and chemotherapy for cancer. He is 49.
I had dinner with a friend from Atlanta. He had come to town to visit one of his former co-workers, gravely ill with cancer. His friend, he said, was 49 or 50.
Death and disease become more evident as we saunter into middle age. They're like footsteps in a dark alley, moving ever closer. We dare not turn around. We just quicken our pace, and hope everything turns out for the best.
``People all around you are leaving empty spaces,'' is the way a friend of mine, who is 44, put it the other day. Our parents and their compatriots are dying of old age. Increasingly, our contemporaries are beginning to die, too.
Government statistics tell the story: Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for men and women between the ages of 15 and 24. For men 25 to 44, HIV infection is number one. For women, it's cancer. From 45 to 64, heart disease is the primary killer of men, cancer of women.
Accidents, automotive and other kinds, drop to third among men, fifth among women.
No wonder we feel nervous.
``With accidents, you kind of look at the guy as unlucky,'' said John Heil, a clinical and sports psychologist with Lewis-Gale Clinic. ``We tend to associate disease with advanced aging.''
Between the ages of 45 and 54, men and women are about four times more likely to die of heart disease than they were between 35 and 44.
The death rate from cancer is four times higher for men from 45 to 54 than for those 35 to 44, and three times higher among the older women.
Overall, the death rate per 100,000 men in the United States is about twice as high for those from 45 to 54 as for those 10 years younger. The rate is nearly 2.5 times times higher for the older group of women than for the younger.
We can improve our odds by choosing to exercise, to eat wisely and to avoid smoking and drinking to excess. But none of us has any guarantee of good health or a long life.
The statistics only get worse as the years roll by. That, plus the conclusion of their careers, is why people in their 60s often have a profound awareness of their mortality, Heil said.
Even in mid-life, time no longer seems infinite. This can bother us, but we needn't let it get us down. Instead we can evaluate our dreams, throwing away the impossible ones and focusing on the those that look doable, but have been deferred.
``You can say to yourself, `If I want to do this thing, I can do it better now, because I'm smarter,''' Heil said. And we can give in to our natural impulse to share our knowledge, training and experience with others.
``It's a time when it's easy to get as much satisfaction out of coaching as you used to get out of being an athlete.''
I know a guy who frankly admits he had a hard time accepting all this. He mourned the things he hadn't tried, the relationships that hadn't worked, the man he hadn't been.
``I didn't feel worthy of anybody's love and attention,'' he said. He was depressed for a year. But he survived that dark time, and he feels good about things today.
How does the old saying go? ``This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.''
And let us use it well.
Time Out, by Joe Kennedy, looks at life in the middle years - marriage, family and contemporary events - from a perspective both serious and light. It appears every two weeks.
by CNB