Almost every day last week, I read or heard stories of men and women my age or younger who died in the previous year. Many were names that I knew of or knew.

This seems to me a rather unpleasant and perhaps poorly-thought out ritual for New Year’s Ave. Give us a break. I doubt many people looking at these faces knew who they were.

It hardly inspires one to look ahead to the new year and embrace life with hope and joy.

Why are we so addicted to mourning and so oblivious to living?

This morning, and for an hour or two,  I thought I might be joining the list. I had a  medical and cancer scare these past few days and another right after I woke up.

I reached my doctor’s office and talked to a skilled nurse, and as we went over the symptoms, we both identified what the problem almost certainly was.

I’m going for tests and an exam tomorrow to be safe, but it’s clear that I don’t have cancer or any other chronic or life-threatening disease (I guess I do have two, diabetes and heart disease).

I think these days of how I can deal with aging and death gracefully and peacefully without turning this into a lament; I know I have always been afraid of the wrong things in my life – like money – and those things pale in relationship to an illness like cancer or death.

I don’t understand why so many people my age succumb to illnesses like cancer and why I have not. I have no plans to be immortal.

I feel healthy and strong; my writing is clear and satisfying; my animals are great companions; my blog is a joy, my pictures are much loved, and my love for Maria is rich and deep.

But the cancer scare turned my wheels, and I saw the possibility – the gift – it offered me to strengthen myself for the incredible journey ahead of me one day, possibly tomorrow.

Like death itself, this chapter in my life needs to be considered and respected, not in panic or self-pity – please shoot me if you catch me doing old talk “at our age” or whining about how difficult it is to get old sometimes. We are often the prophets of our ruin.

One friend told me that he said his 25-year-old son “doesn’t ever get old” because his legs ache and he has diabetes. I hear this phrase often.

I told him never to say that to me if he wished to remain friends. What a cruel and senseless – and selfish –  thing to speak to a young person with so many years to look ahead. Does his son have a choice? Why pass on our denial and our neuroses?

Old talk kills as many people as heart disease, I bet. You are how you see yourself and how you think about your life. I will not be a whineass when I think about getting older because I know my body and soul are listening. I would become what I complain about, a grumpy and disheartened old man.

I’m not afraid of dying too much as I am of forgetting that I am living and being grateful for it.

This morning I had the extraordinary fear that comes with the fear of death, one of the greatest fears people have. Still, I won’t lie; the cancer scare frightened me. I went to read The Five Remembrances I read about in Thich Nhat Hans’s excellent book Fear. They come from the Anguttara Nikaya III, 70-71; Surely I will have to grow old.

“When we look directly into the seeds of this fear instead of trying to cover it up or run (or hide), we begin to transform it,” writes Thich Nhat Hanh in his great book Fear.

He writes that it’s time for me to read the Five Remembrances when I am frightened.

I went downstairs, sat in my reading chair, and read them aloud.

1. I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape having ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.
4. All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. I inherit the results of my body, speech, and mind. My actions are my continuation (and my responsibility.

Something about these resemberances is very powerful. Truth trumps fear.

I read these remembrances aloud, and when I was done, my fear was gone.

We will all die. We are all a raid of growing old. We don’t usually care to talk about it. We want that fear to stay hidden down there.

I must accept this as reality, the truth, and not just a fact to hide from and push deep into my consciousness. I’m not young; I can’t brush it off as I used to by saying I’ll get old one day. When I call up the truth and accept it, all the foolish and useless things I do and think to escape old age and death vanish.

I tried it today. It works for me.