2017
In my 69th year on this planet I must, at long last, accept that I am mortal. Chuck Berry is dead.
For decades I have hitched my lifespan to that of rock’n’roll’s first superstar, and as a charter member of the rock’n’roll generation, for very good reason. Rock stars have short and tragic lifespans, mostly due to unnatural causes. They get killed in airplane crashes, car crashes, and motorcycle crashes. They die of drug overdoses, in alcoholic stupors, or from AIDS. They drown. They get shot to death. They commit suicide. Sometimes they even die from heart attacks or cancer. But the one thing they all have in common is that they die young. Too young.
The one thing rock stars never die of is old age. Until now. Chuck Berry was 90 when he passed away from natural causes.
For almost as long as I can remember, I believed that as long as Chuck Berry was alive, I could never die. I mean, look at him! When I was a teenager, Chuck Berry already looked ancient, and he wasn’t even 40 years old yet. He’d had a hard life, a couple of stretches in prison, and it showed on his face. But his energy never waned. While other rock stars were dropping dead around him, I was convinced Chuck Berry was indestructible and immortal. And if he could live forever, then why couldn’t I?
Like rock stars –even Chuck Berry himself – and every other person on the planet, I’d done some stupid things in my younger years that could have killed me decades ago. But I was among the lucky ones who somehow cheated death. And those narrow escapes were only the ones I know about. How many times have we all cheated death unknowingly, perhaps by driving through an intersection 30 seconds before a drunk motorist runs the red light at 75 miles per hour without crashing into anybody? Nobody’s the wiser because nothing bad happened. But we leave the house 30 seconds later because we couldn’t find the keys, and we’re in the morgue. We all might be risking death from some random event several times a year but survive because we happen to be in the right place at the wrong time.
As long as Chuck Berry lived, I reminded myself repeatedly that I was immune to youthful folly and random tragedies. For 69 years I was right. I had hitched my fortune to the right rock star.
But Chuck Berry is dead, and now I must come face to face with my own mortality. I can only hope to live as long as he did and die a natural death.