Some college friends and I went to say goodbye to our old friend who isn’t going to make it and as we stood there crying and hugging each other on the sidewalk outside of the hospital one of them said we were all talking earlier and we still think Luke will be the first one to go.

Got my ass there.

This will be seventh friend of mine to die in the past fifteen months. All thirty five to fifty something year old men. Young men you could say. I know fifty-ish isn't young for almost anything but it is young for being dead. I said something like this before when the grim tally was only six and before that when it was only five and so on. I just had to stop for a moment and count them out on my fingers to make sure I had remembered them all. A process that made me feel childish and ancient at once. Some were people I had known in real life for twenty or thirty years and some were mostly friends on the computer but that is nevertheless seven freshly dug holes in the world. Literally and figuratively.