Death-Defying Baby Boomers!

Persevering even when mortality stares us in the face.

Written by expert Lou Macaluso and originally published in Life After 50 magazine.

“This is scary—being on the threshold of senior citizenship,” I said just before blowing out the single candle representing the 56 birthday candles that, if lit, would have melted the chocolate frosting and set off the smoke detector in our dining room.

“Cut it out,” a colleague in my age range said with a note of seriousness and fear in his voice. “We’re not senior citizens; we’re middle-aged!”

“Yeah, and how many 112 year-old people do you know?”

Baby boomers are now the 50+ through 60+ generation. Our mortality stares us right in our faces, and many of us deal with it the same way we were taught as children of the 1950s to deal with uncomfortable issues—we ignore them, don’t talk about them, bury them within us until they develop into irrational fears.

I’m not the first to recognize death phobia among baby boomers; however, researchers and writers have focused mainly on its sister fear—aging phobia.  FIND/SVP, a research company, did a study in 2005 for marketers of baby boomer products. Among their suggestions for advertisers:
• Appeal to boomers’ self-image (and aging phobia)
• Try stealth marketing and new descriptors—Boomers don’t like to be called seniors or even middle-aged.

Ray Lesser’s article “Baby Boomers Will Become Immortal,” in the online magazine Funny Times, uses Ray Kurzwell, author-inventor-entrepreneur, as a prime example of aging phobia evolving into death phobia: Kurzwell, now 56, could be a poster child for the baby-boom generation… He believes he’s already given himself the body of a 40-year-old.  “I’ve been reprogramming the biochemistry of my own body for 20 years.  I take about 250 supplements each day and weekly intravenous therapies.”

But is he the prime candidate to become the world’s first death-defying immortal or is he a death-phobic hypochondriac?

It isn’t really fair to say that baby boomers’ death phobia stems from not talking about death when we were kids. We talked about death—TV death.  “Bang, Bang… You’re Dead!” And what did that mean?  It meant we tried to emulate the TV character’s death scene:  Hold the wound… no blood… tightly grimace the face muscles for the close-up… zoom out so the stunt man could fall over or through a railing… somersault onto the gambling table of the saloon below… cards, coins, and poker chips fly everywhere…  how cool!

Lesson learned

I grew up in a typical lower middle-class home of a 1950s baby boomer—blue-collar suburb, used family car, and a black-and-white TV set.  My dad was a WW II vet, proud to have served his country but sickened from participating in ravaging death—so  sickened, that he kept most of his war stories deep inside where they festered; he wanted to protect my sisters and me from the ugliness of death, so we never discussed it. My mother embraced the Betty Crocker/June Cleaver image—children, church, school, a good recipe for brownies, and a Veg-O-Matic.

Consequently, when I witnessed the death of the neighborhood grouchy old man from a heart attack just moments after another kid and I had made fun of him, my parents offered this advice for dealing with my guilt and trauma, “Forget about it. Don’t think about it, or you’ll have nightmares.”

But I couldn’t “forget about it,” so I experienced horrific dreams about death that I shared with no one.

When my grandfather died in 1957, I was told that “he was in a better place.”  They took my older sister and me to the “wake” but never explained the meaning of a “wake.”  I asked an older kid down the block, and he said, “It’s where you have to look at a dead guy,” so I punched him in the mouth… but he was right. Seeing my grandfather’s pasty dead face, stiffened body, and rosary-tangled fingers in the coffin like Bella Lagosi only intensified my nightmares.

December 1, 1958 marked a tragic historical day in Chicago. Our Lady of Angels Elementary School caught fire minutes before 1500 children would have been dismissed for the day. In the end, 92 children and 3 nuns perished in the blaze. Television and newspaper photos graphically portrayed children burning and smothering. Years before the fire I had made a chance acquaintance with one of the child victims, and this further nourished my death phobia.

Nevertheless, I learned to escape from my fears via a transistor radio. Someone had given it to me the previous summer while I lay in a hospital bed and recuperated from eye surgery. With my eyes bandaged and the radio by my ear I became a young connoisseur of rock ‘n roll music. When I left the hospital I began collecting used juke box records of Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Paul Anka, and my favorite, Buddy Holly. Whenever I became afraid I listened to that music, and it seemed to bring me to a place of immortality where rock stars lived.

Immortality lost

Just days before Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” were to appear in Chicago’s Aragon Ball Room, their chartered plane went down in a cornfield in Iowa. The newspapers showed the plane wreckage and body parts. As Don McClean stated years later in his recording, it was “…the day (February 2, 1959) the music died.”

Six days later, my eighth birthday, I lay in bed sweating, shivering, and unable to sleep. Over the phone, Dr. Gaetono, the family physician, diagnosed my condition as “something going around” and prescribed Bayer aspirin, bed rest, and liquids. In retrospect, I was clinically depressed, another something-not-talked-about in the 50s. My mother had invited relatives, friends, and neighbors to celebrate my younger sister’s and my birthday that night. Downstairs people laughed, drank, and ate. Upstairs in the dark, I lay depressed and frightened from my horrible death nightmares.  I opened the window, leaned out, and felt the cold winter air on my face and body. I looked down and wondered what it would feel like to fall out, land on my head, break my neck, and never fear death again… I’d be in a “better place.” My hands slipped and my body fell forward, but my knee and foot caught the center brace of the double window, and somehow I fought my way back inside.

As I lay breathless on my bed, footsteps clomped up the stairs and headed toward my attic bedroom; it was my Uncle Ray. He embodied the counter-culture of the 1950s—early twenties, blond hair slicked back like James Dean, defiant, and suspicious of all authority figures; in short, he was my idol. More importantly, he saved my life.

New lease on live

Shortly after he wished me a happy birthday and started telling me a story about how he threw a kid out a second-story window in high school, I interrupted him and confided all my problems—my guilt over laughing at the old grouch before he died, my grandfather’s wake, the girl in the Our Lady of Angels fire, the effect of Buddy Holly’s death on me, the nightmares, and my recent botched suicide attempt.

My Uncle Ray did the following:
• He listened—He didn’t treat me like the 50s kid (be seen and not heard).
• He didn’t run and tell my parents. 
• He didn’t offer their response, “Forget about it.”
• He shared—He told me how he experienced the same fears, nightmares and suicidal thoughts after his mother died when he was ten years old.
• He gave me something—He gave me a quote by Mark Twain from a book a nun at his elementary school had given him: The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Somehow thinking of that quote got him through his trauma.  I wrote it down and memorized it, but that alone wasn’t the magic wand that cured me.  I studied it, learned its meaning, and examined the lives of people who I believed lived by it: Uncle Ray, my living grandfather, James Dean, Babe Ruth, and many more. These people seemed to enjoy life; they did as they pleased without fear of failure or ridicule. I tried out for a Little League team, even though I knew that I wasn’t very good. I attempted many other sports and found that I had talent in some, no talent in others, and loved them all. In high school I participated in drama and forensics, and since then have worn the hats of a teacher, coach, triathlete, public speaker, union president, and author.

So what’s my point?  Baby boomers are doomed to be death phobic unless saved by an Uncle Ray?

Of course not. Baby boomers are not a homogeneous group just because they grew up during an era that is clearly defined by its cultural and social values. They grew up with unique family experiences and social environments within the context of the 1950s. Some may have escaped with little thought about death and all were washed in the real blood (not the bloodless 50s TV deaths) of the 60s when television aired a president getting his head blown off, live coverage of his assassin assassinated, and an historic presidential wake and funeral.

I, however, believe that most baby boomers suffer from some degree of death phobia ranging from a mild annoyance to an immobilizing neurosis.  My advice is simple:
• Embrace the thought—The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
• Study people who appear to live by that thought. They have a passion for the moment, a particular art or pastime, and life in general.
• Use your fear of death to catapult you into life. Do something you always wanted to do before you die. Get lost in something or someone you like or love. Get passionate about something and kindle your passion with the thought that this may be your only chance to enjoy it.

Not long ago I visited Uncle Ray in the hospital where he was dying from the effects of diabetes. He wore a NASCAR cap that I had given him while he sat up in bed and watched an ESPN broadcast of his passion, stock car racing.  “C’mon in here Jimmy (my family name); this is gettin’ good!”

He announced the race like a color analyst and detailed important attributes of the top drivers and their skills. During commercials he reminisced about memorable characters and events in our family. When it was time to leave he tipped his hat and hailed, “You know I think the world of ya’!”

…So I left him, and he died… but he and his philosophy of life have never left me.

Lou Macaluso is a writer, English teacher, former coach, triathlete, union president and public speaker on his expertise: Baby Boomers and Death Phobia and other topics.  His book Clown Town, a true story/social Chicago history of a baby boomer’s struggle with death phobia filtered through a child’s perspective will be available in July, 2008.

For information on Lou or booking inquiries please contact Wendi at Speakers@CharliJane.com or call 402 218 4426