Fearing 40

It's not about a midlife crisis. It's about fearing this is the end of life rather than the middle.

When my mom died at 47 I always knew she was young. Her spirit was wild and vibrant, she didn’t have wrinkles beyond laugh lines dug in from years of practical jokes and a quirky sense of humor.

As sudden loss goes, she was here one day- gone the next. It rattled me to my core that life could cease with no warning, no calls for family to gather around and say goodbye, no withering or waiting. A heart can simply stop beating, can decide that it has gone on reliably ushering your blood and oxygen to its vast network of cells for long enough, and take an eternal rest. It is madness in its complex simplicity.

It was 14 years ago today that she died. In my twenties, I said the words, “She was only 47” with indignation. It was an age that sounded too young to die, but it was still an age far from my own, one I could theorize about but not embody. In truth, 47 sounded a little old when it was waiting in some distant future twenty-one years away.

The years have trodded along filling with vacations in beautiful landscapes, babies being born, races being run, mountains being climbed. There have been more losses, more heartache, and surprisingly deep love, joy, and fulfillment. I have barely registered the millions of moments that have ushered me along this strange path of aging.

It is with wonderment that I realize some of my closest friends are now the age my Mom was when she died. We laugh together until tears come and talk about raising our children on the brinks of adulthood. It brings my mother’s memory into a different perspective. I imagine her with her friends in a parallel universe mirroring me with my friends. As quickly as I imagine it, I fear it. If she could die in her forties, any of us could.

I crossed that dangerous threshold into 40 this past weekend. My birthday and the anniversary of her death are always close, much like her and I. From this vantage point, standing in this new decade of mine, 47 feels terrifyingly young. It is the end of my roadmap as a woman, as a mom. A reminder that time is finite and unknown.

When I was 33 I purchased as much life insurance as I could. I maxed out my employer benefits and opened a private policy on top of it. It was the greatest purchase of my life. I thought, as long as I die by the time I am 63 my family will be financially taken care of. It felt like I was cheating the system, die by 63? That is more than 15 years longer than I expect, or perhaps 15 years longer than I can imagine.

Since her death, I have been purposeful about creating memories. Chasing dreams. Taking the trip. I am a serial vacation planner. I take my Dad’s zen philosophy “money isn’t real” and my morbid reasoning “I will be dead soon” and use them to propel me into living. Does it all come down to a trauma response? Possibly, but if the sum of it all is happiness with little regret then I am grateful for the traumatic trigger that keeps that fire lit inside of me.

Looking ahead at my forties, I am both invigorated and fearful. It could be the end, but it could also be any number of beginnings.

Here’s to embracing our aging as we hold tight to living.

Here’s to the woman I have missed every day for 14 years who showed me what living and loving looks like. It’s a timeless beauty.

This is Amanda Kernahan Writes.