No One Gets Out of Here Alive

The older you get, the closer your mortality appears to be gaining on you in your rear-view mirror.

Once you cross the threshold of 50, you’ve lived enough of life to have experienced some losses personally, seen others who have suffered them or just simply are more aware that no one gets out of here alive.

I recall as a kid my dad watching old movies, and when certain actors and actresses would appear on screen, he would run through a check list aloud:

“Oh, he’s dead.” “Yeah, she’s dead.” “Oh, wow, he’s gone, too.”

(As an aside, for those concerned about the actor Abe Vigoda, who has been prematurely declared dead, there’s a website dedicated to keeping tabs on his breathing: http://www.abevigoda.com/)

Hollywood stars aside, I’ve mulled over the question of how long I want to live in a previous blog post.

And in a recent conversation, my mom lamented aging as being a pointless process of biding your time. There again, my folks live in a retirement community that they not-so-euphemistically call “God’s Waiting Room.”

In this latest podcast of About Men Radio, Pedro and I explore the question of death, dying, facing our mortality and what, as grown-ups, we should do about preparing for it in terms of wills, medical directives and other cheery stuff like that.

Don’t shuffle off this mortal coil without giving it a listen.