Feeling older

I'm a member of Generation X, meaning I'm in my early 40s. There have been recent events reminding me I'm not getting younger, such as the death of my uncle, the last survivor of my father's nuclear family, meaning, at least for that part of the family, mysiblings , cousins and myself are the elders. It is times like that where I realize I'm not a 15 year old anymore and I have to acknowledge that my youth is passing and I'm an adult. This week's events felt like that all over again.

It doesn't seem that long ago when I was driving home from my after school job, listening to one of Michael Jackson's latest hits on the radio, before crashing on the couch for a few minutes, listening to Ed McMahon laughing at Johnny Carson's monologue while I wound down so I could go to sleep in my room where the Farah Fawcett Majors poster used to be (that thing fell off the wall years before). And this week, all died.

To be honest, none of their deaths surprised me. McMahon was older and had been reported in poor health for some time. Rumors of Fawcett's impending death had also been circulating for a time. And let's face it, are any of us really surprised Jackson died at a relatively young age due to a possible perscription overdose? Additionally, unlike when older relatives and friends my own age have died, their deaths don't affect me personally. Carson's Tonight Show has been gone for almost two decades and, aside from clips when he was about to lose his home, McMahon had been out of the limelight of late. Same for Fawcett, aside from occasional appearances here and there. As to Jackson, it has been almost 20 years since any of his music appealed to me and I prefer to remember him as the entertainer of the 1980s and not this weird, sick creature he morphed into in the 1990s and 2000s. So why am I feeling a little sad today?

As a child of the late 1960s to mid 1980s, my childhood was one surrounded by cultural icons. And, for better or worse, Jackson, McMahon and Fawcett were the icons of my youth (along with Prince, The Brady Bunch, Lucille Ball, the original Star Trek crew etc), even if they had drifted in from the previous generation. Though I didn't know Robert Reed or James Doohan (though I did see him once at a Star Trek convention, funny guy) I remember being sad when I heard they had died. And though I remember being interested in the coverage of Presiden's Nixon's death, I was much more affected by President Reagan's death, though it was also somewhat expected, as I recalled his presidency and barely remembered Nixon's, aside from being confused at the time as to why the President of the United States would consider breaking into our home to steal my mother's scotch tape. Still I had never met Ronald Reagan so why should I have been affected? Probably because it simply marked the passage of time.

During Reagan's presidency, my parents were young and healthy (though I thought those old farts in their 40s and 50s to be ancient) and even most of my grandparents and their generation were still around (at least in 1981). By the time of Reagan's death, my grandparents' generation was all but gone and even many of the relatives of my parents' generation were dead or ailing, including both of my parents. With children of my own and a mother suffering one health crisis after another by then, it was as if another piece of my childhood had died. So maybe that is why now, when I am at an age I remember my father being and my children are at ages I remember being, these latest deaths just remind me that I am getting older. And that's the way it is.