The medical staff was doing their pre-surgical routine, taking vitals and getting my medical information. The nurse was surprised to learn I was currently taken zero prescription medications.

“So, if it weren’t for this,” she said, “you’d be in really good health.”

I replied sourly, “Ain’t that the damn truth.” 

The, “this,” was cancer.

At age 59, living an active life that included hiking, biking, soccer, and other forms of exercise, I’d suddenly been diagnosed with appendiceal cancer. The first surgery was to remove my appendix. Twelve days later, a second tumor was removed, along with half of my colon. Chemotherapy loomed on the horizon.

Until that diagnosis, the end of life was something I thought about only occasionally. Naturally, I dealt with death when it came to other families; that’s what a pastor does. But my own final bow was something I assumed was at least thirty years in the future. And why not? My grandmother made it to 96, my father made it to 90, and my mother is still going strong. Sure, my grandfather died much earlier of lung cancer, but he smoked, so that didn’t count. And my brother died of cancer at age 43, but that was a fluke.

This is what denial sounds like, by the way.

So, at age 59, I suddenly had to accept the reality that I might not make it to 62, much less the classic retirement age of 65.

But I wasn’t alone. A church member had recently received a defibrillator. His grief began when the doctor told him the implant was only good for ten years. That’s when this man was confronted by the reality of entering a new stage of life—a stage that comes with an expiration date.