The death of Christopher Hitchens has affected me more than I expected it to. I’m not sure why. I’d read his columns on the disease’s progression in Vanity Fair, I know what the odds are on cancer; and I didn’t know the man. I disagreed with him as often as I agreed.

Perhaps it’s because suddenly, in the last couple of years, cancer has been so much more a part of my life, through my friends. Before this, my people have been taken down by car crashes, heart disease and old age. And they have been blessedly few.

But lately, that has changed. My oldest friend died of brain cancer on the first day of this year. Another friend has been battling another form for a year, and is much the worse for wear. My clean-living cousin had to deal with a less-deadly form, and he survived, but he had to stare it down as well.

And an acquaintance who I like very much is going to die from it, probably soon. All of these people are, to my mind, young. Watching people around you die will enhance your sense of mortality. Which is not great. But it’s not a completely bad thing.

Or maybe I’m thinking about this because, as lame as it may sound, I’m sick right now. There’s nothing like being sick, even with the simplest cold, to make you realize how utterly without control we are in our lives. Maybe I let myself get run-down, but maybe it’s just luck; in any case, no matter how well we eat, or how much we exercise, and no matter how good our medical care is, we have remarkably little control over our bodies, which is, after all, where we live. And cease to live.

It’s interesting to watch people’s reactions to these horrible events, or the news of them. Some hunker down, redouble their efforts to get secure, to take care of themselves; some just go into denial and refuse to think about it, or act like they do.

I may be kidding myself – it’s happened – but my response is to feel as though I need to just go for it. Or, y’know, GO FOR IT. Live larger. Take care of business, sure, but also take more chances. Live not just a little, but a LOT. It’s a hard thing to explain to younger people, but the older you get, at a certain point, you become suddenly aware that you have less time ahead of you then you have behind. The things that you thought you’d do someday seem much more unlikely given your remaining time, unless you do them SOON.

These intimations of limitation can leave you at a fork in the road: You can say “I’d better do that NOW,” or you say, “I wish I’d done that THEN.”

The latter is admitting defeat. No, not admitting it; DECIDING on it. Choosing it. That’s the easy way, it seems. I hear my middle-aged friends already blaming age for all sorts of things they’ve decided not to do. And I even see a lot of younger people shying away from taking chances in a world that seems ever-more dangerous.

Taking the other fork – doing it NOW – is perhaps a bit harder, because you have to face the fears that kept you from doing it all along. Those fears get bigger and scarier as the years pass. Like an untended wound, or a rent in fabric, they get worse. Mundane analogies, but apt.

Or they might diminish, the way monsters of our youth seem like cartoons. In some ways, I think it’s ultimately easier to go that “go for it” route, because you gradually come to see how little there really is to lose. When you see your friends lose EVERYTHING – their bodily functions, their hair, their youthful appearance, their ability to do their jobs or play with their kids, their freedom of movement – you have to ask yourself: What I am afraid of? What can I lose? What’s the worst that could happen?

Reading back on this, I know it’s kind of banal. I’ve not said anything new. Hitchens would yawn. And it’s just a blog post. But the fact is, even though a lot of these thoughts are not new to me – any intelligent young person may have thought the same, I know I did – actually watching life, whole PEOPLE, go away so randomly confirms one’s youthful insights.

I’m going to keep writing, though I’ll never be a Hitchens. Maybe I’ll find more interesting ways to do it; that’s a beauty of writing, as opposed to say, athletics: You can get better right up till the end. (My dear friend John Burris said that years ago – long before HE died at 53.)

I’ve lived well, but my early years were full of fears. I have faced many of them, and doing so has made my life better – it would be unrecognizable if I hadn’t.

But there are things I still haven’t done, things that still intimidate me. I am even more likely to pursue them now. My time is short and my body will slowly fail me, and I’ll probably be dealing with this reality, and this subject, for the rest of my days.

I have a lot of friends; I will LOSE a lot of friends. And that’s if I’m lucky, and they don’t lose me first.

But the beauty inside of this apparent tragedy is that it reminds me to let go, to not hold on too tightly, including holding on to my silly illusion that I am somehow immune to any of this. Everything we have will be stripped away, and all we can do, really, is accept that fact and do what we can to love and care for the people around us who are stricken.

And to love those left behind, who cannot afford to be quite so philosophical about it.

Knowing all this is, to me, the key to the only real freedom we get. I won’t be hanging on to anything too tightly, including my own fears. I want to be able to let those fears go wherever they stop me from living, and from loving. It’s not much, but it’s the only way forward that I can see.

As usual, Dylan nailed it, so he gets the final words:

Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking fast
I’m drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me.

(“Mississippi” copyright 2001 Bob Dylan)