An Old Email Address

Today my friend, Bob, emailed me.

He wrote to tell me that one of our friends died on Friday.

He wrote:
'Jeremy, I hate to be the Grim Reaper of Columbus, but Don Don died this morning. I thought you'd like to know.'

I replied and thanked him for the update although I'd already found out Saturday afternoon.

It's funny how life closes in on you the older you get. It's pretty simple really.

When you are young, few people you know die. Maybe one or all of your grandparents. An older aunt or uncle, maybe an aged neighbor. Perhaps the family pet. Really, though, death is a stranger to us when we are young.

When you get out of school tragic losses begin to appear at random intervals. Friends lost inhaling drugs on their smoke break, a motorcycle accident, a brave yet unwise attempt to swim to shore while stranded on a impotent boat. Death becomes more real to us at these times, because some of the people that have died are our own age, maybe some even younger.

As a career unfolds you meet people thru work, many of whom are much older than you. One day a phone rings and you find that someone you met at the beginning of your career has past away. Death now becomes something we think about when applied to our own life for what once we never thought would ever come to us has found the path that we walk.

Before you know it three or four friends die within a few months of each other.

I've lost three friends recently. Two were untimely deaths, quite a bit before what could be called a good time for them to die. The other had lived a good life, but tragically disease took him away. Today I found that I had yet to remove their email addresses from my contacts list.
Right now, I'm not sure I will.

It is quite clear to me now that death walks the same paths that I do.