When you make it to your 70s, and even earlier for some, you begin to see death as real and much more likely, even conceivably in the short term, than when you were younger and death was mere abstraction.
This realization brings with it a kind of acceptance — that your time now is indeed limited and no matter what you do, your death is unavoidable. This realization, oddly enough, introduces a strange kind of fatalism that frees one from being too concerned with death.
And that fatalism gives one a new kind of liberation from the fear of death when you completely accept the fact that you will indeed die and perhaps sooner rather than later.
Henry's Views 