You may remember this quote:

Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.

— Ambrose Bierce

If recent events are any indication, I and those around me have become quite familiar with him of late.

In the last month I lost my aunt Jan to ovarian cancer and my uncle Charlie to Alzheimer’s.  One of my employees recently lost his grandmother.  My friend Blindf8th also recently lost his grandmother.  My friend Lee lost his father only a few weeks ago.  Yesterday, Jenny’s aunt Martha died after a long battle with cancer.  If misery does indeed love company, I find myself surrounded right now by a great many fellow sufferers.

It would seem that the cold hand of eternity has reached out to many people in my life.  Jenny and I discussed just this morning precisely what I already said here about time’s predation of those around us and how it becomes even more real as we age.  While neither of us is old, neither are we in our late teens or early twenties.  Many of those in our lives are well beyond us in years.  Our own aging, therefore, means so many others are fast approaching their ends.

It’s difficult sometimes to step out of the emotional hurt of loss in order to understand the natural progression of things.  We find personal anguish in the death of loved ones, yet it should come as no surprise that while we age there are significant numbers who are well beyond our own years and for whom death is already calling.  It stalks all of us even now.  Despite the cold logic of that fact, it does little to quell the hurt and emptiness that comes with the goodbyes of death.

My heartfelt sympathies go out to Jenny as they have to all of those around me who have felt the breath of permanent loss in their own lives during recent weeks.  She’s now headed out of state to attend the funeral and be with her family in this difficult time.  I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but this process has become all too familiar to me.