By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

My eyes usually glaze right over newspaper obituaries, but not lately.

It's not that I read them; I don't. It's the occasional photographs that are getting to me. The faces of people too young to have died.

People younger than me.

At 44 I'm supposed to experience midlife crisis, not fear of mortality. I'm too young to be old. But apparently, I'm not too young to be dead.

Maybe this is my own personal midlife crisis, or at least a taste of what one feels like.

Maybe it's why I run a little harder when I work out.

Maybe it's the reason I grew the beard, although with all the gray whiskers, I appear older.

But looking at obituaries? At my age, that's just plain weird.

Men don't do that, especially if they're fretting over their lost youth. They're supposed to nurse sports injuries they never got when they were younger and endure comments like "You're getting too old to do that."

Mortality, though, is a curious topic to ponder.

My defense against advancing age — or the idea, anyway — was to work out.

Fitness would be my fountain of youth. If I ran hard enough or lifted enough weights or swam a bunch of laps or something, I would never get old.

In reality, I would strain something.

When I got a treadmill test a few years ago, I had to fill out a medical form that asked why I was there. I wrote: "My wife is convinced I am going to die from a heart attack."

I beat up on that poor treadmill. A few days later, I hurt my back and didn't run for three years.

There's a message in that, I guess.

Moderation? Maybe. Humility? Absolutely.

Accept and enjoy what you have? That's a must. If you're obsessed about the finale, you won't enjoy the present.

But people die every day, young and old. I know this as well as anyone.

I've written about more deaths than I can remember.

I was a pallbearer for a teenage friend.

And I watched a heart attack kill my father in mid-conversation. He was a few years older than I am now, still breathing hard after a run.

That doesn't mean I have thought a lot about death. In truth, I laughed it off. Who hasn't?

Still, at some point mortality becomes real in a way you never thought of before. Someone your age dies or gets a life-threatening disease, and suddenly life feels impossibly short.

You can't deny it. You can't ignore it. You can't sugarcoat it. And it scares you.

So where to connect the dots?

On the obituary page. That's where I realized how simple the truth was.

When I looked recently, almost everyone there was twice as old as me. And it seemed that most of them had led full lives.

There was much to look forward to, including lots of hard running and a scruffy gray beard.

But I've learned my lesson. I'm not going to read the obituaries anymore.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.