Less than three years from today, Madonna will be older than Abraham Lincoln. On Oct. 19, 2012, to be exact, the Great Emancipator will be passed in age by the Great Gyrator.

That may seem an odd way to contemplate the March of Time, but it has the advantage of being less painful than pondering one's own mortality.

Which is something I've been doing a lot of lately, having recently suffered another birthday - which seems to happen around the same time every year, making it a chronic condition. At any rate, this latest anniversary puts me seven years up on Honest Abe and closing in on the average age at which those who signed the Declaration of Independence signed off: 68. (One of them, Charles Carroll, of Maryland, made it to 95; another, Thomas Lynch Jr., of South Carolina, was dead at 30.)

When in the course of human events it became necessary for them to ink that document, of course, they were that much younger: 43 and change, on average. Which only makes Yrs Trly feel that much older.

And if I really want to wallow in it (which I clearly do) there's plenty more evidence that 61 puts me in the homestretch, as these things go - starting with the biblical allocation of 70 years, which is exactly what my father received. Mom did better, making it almost to 92, which is encouraging.

But, after that, a peek at any list of famous people who died young, or youngish, is even more morbidly instructive: King Tut was a kid, 18, when he fell victim (if the conspiracy theorists are right) to an ancient pyramid scheme. James Dean died at 24, John Keats at 25, Otis Redding at 26. Then there's 27, a particularly deadly age for rock stars, with Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain all bowing out. Crazy Horse rode into the sunset at 28. Alexander the Great, Mozart and Van Gogh never saw their forties. Nor did Marilyn Monroe or Princess Di. Both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were gone at 39.

Depressed yet?

On the bright side, a lot of those folks died in unnatural ways - assassination, car crash, ship wreck, drug overdose, suicide - and most of us don't have to worry about stuff like that, leaving us free to check out some of the more conventional ways of checking out that we're likely to face as the miles pile up on the old odometer. The kinds of ailments that "old people" get. Things I never thought I'd have to face.

Here are my findings so far:

Last year I did the heart attack, which was very annoying but not very fatal - a few days in the hospital, the installation of a metal gizmo, then a rehab program, followed by some lifestyle changes that either will or will not prevent a recurrence. In other words, you do have some say in the matter.

This year I'm doing cancer, and it's not half as much fun - devices you never thought you'd be hooked up to, levels of pain you never thought you could endure, even though your case is "low grade" and even though modern medicine has plenty of "procedures" and treatments available, which are even now being lined up on your calendar for many months to come. In other words, you don't feel like you have much say at all.

What is to be done? Well, I'm going to follow instructions, take one day at a time, let a smile be my umbrella and direct my feet to the sunny side of the street.

Because, as corny as it sounds, there's still plenty to be grateful for.

Reach Glenn Richter at grichter@record-journal.com or (203) 317-2222