leastbest - but still one of the best
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Uncharted Territory
posted Wednesday, 24 August 2005
Today is my forty-ninth birthday. From this point on I go into uncharted territory.
When I was a child we often talked about everyone dying young in my family. My father at 42, his brother at 41, his father at 40, etc. We would half-joking talk about a curse on the family. Then my cousin Bobby got colon cancer and died at 35. My sister started getting headaches and it turned out to be a brain tumor causing her death at 48. A year later my older brother was diagnosed with colon cancer and while recovering and undergoing chemotherapy died of a heart attack at 48.
My brother Brad was five years older than me and I always watched him. I saw the way he began graying around the temples as I'm doing now. It was like having a vanguard seeing time ahead of me. Forty-nine is a rubicon that I'm happy to pass.
It's an odd feeling knowing that there are more years behind me than in front. It's going to be interesting.
When I was a child we often talked about everyone dying young in my family. My father at 42, his brother at 41, his father at 40, etc. We would half-joking talk about a curse on the family. Then my cousin Bobby got colon cancer and died at 35. My sister started getting headaches and it turned out to be a brain tumor causing her death at 48. A year later my older brother was diagnosed with colon cancer and while recovering and undergoing chemotherapy died of a heart attack at 48.
My brother Brad was five years older than me and I always watched him. I saw the way he began graying around the temples as I'm doing now. It was like having a vanguard seeing time ahead of me. Forty-nine is a rubicon that I'm happy to pass.
It's an odd feeling knowing that there are more years behind me than in front. It's going to be interesting.
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