Obituary Dave

 So I've always had a strange, but not unique, habit: I daily read the obituaries. I guess having my Dad die when I was 20 brought the reality of death closer to me than it did many of my contemporaries -- but actually, to me obituaries are far more interesting than wedding notices, or birth announcements.

My friends make fun of me for being the one to typically report to them deaths that hit close to home. Dr. Barry, in particular, gets comically annoyed when I tell him about someone at or near our age who dropped either suddenly or following a battle with a disease, and so he gave me the nickname "Obituary Dave."

Lately, though, Norman has been making a run for the ring. He was the one who reported to our group news of a murder/suicide involving a Chief Medical Officer of Gables Hospital, and her troubled, apparently, husband. He's also sent news of several other untimely deaths. I need to redouble my efforts.

Speaking of the murder/suicide thing -- it's really too bad the murder part doesn't come first -- unless it's consensual, like the plans of our friends Jeff and Lili. Lili has said that if she and Jeff become burdensome incapacitated elders, she wants out that way -- but she kills Jeff first just in case she changes her mind. I love that!

Part of my black hobby is whistling past the graveyard, of course. By making light of contemporaries' deaths, I deal with the fear I and all of us have of leaving this mortal coil. That said, I used to love ONE thing former office roommate Mark used to say. He was a strange guy -- excellent criminal defense lawyer -- who used to race cars for a hobby. I asked if he wasn't afraid of dying. He replied he feared closed head or spinal cord injury, but "Death I can live with."

A few weeks ago, I called Paul suggesting we contact a lawyer we used to work with about a case. I had read the fellow's obit, and was waiting to answer "Ha. We can't! He's dead!" Alas, Paul shares my morbid habit, and had already read about the fellow.

When my Dad died, many concerned friends and colleagues at UM had lovely, comforting words. Still, only the simple message of one person resonated with me. Jim Ash, then the Director of the Honors Program, and a mentor, said to me simply "Dave -- we all do it."

That's all I needed to hear. Yes -- there was the drama of losing my best friend, father, and essentially grandfather. But he did what we are all of us destined for -- left the Earth. Somehow that idea comforted me the most.

Of course, Jim went on to a colorful fate. He became President of Whittier College, and then College of the Sierras in Nevada. Along the way, that Presbyterian minister started more expressing his latent homosexuality, and doing crystal meth. He was arrested in a cheap motel in Reno, strung out, with a young man. A sordid path of failed rehabs awaited him, and he died young, of an overdose.

Still -- I will always appreciate his sage words. And in a great twist to his story, his widow, Pat, came out, too, and lives with a woman who was a former colleague at UM. You never know...

Last Friday, on our Zoom, I learned of a particularly tragic death -- a young man just in his late 30s. He came from privilege -- his mother a doctor who also won Lotto and became quite rich. Despite this financial boom, he was a drug addict since his teen years, and died last week. His obituary was in the Herald today.

Nothing funny when a young person dies -- I see the humor in high flying grownups who fly too close to the sun, like Icarus, and are brought back to Earth.

On another note, our friend in Boston called last night. She wasn't just catching up -- her Mom was in the ED of a local prestigious eye hospital, maybe going blind from a detached retina. Did I know anyone there who might get her to the front of a long line? I did not.

But her hands are SO full now with her boyfriend, and her own issues. I asked why her two brothers couldn't take over her parents' problems. Nah -- one has a sick grown child, and the other is a selfish asshole, she said. Oh well -- I know how that tale ends -- when the parents die, any closeness she had with her brothers will evaporate in the resentment of her having to carry the whole load. And it's too bad -- she truly idolized her brothers.

As the cheerleader I am, I reminded her she is in a very small class of friends of ours -- with BOTH parents still alive. Most of our friends are orphans, like Wifey and I are. Some have a single surviving parent. But two alive? In the fog of dealing with a health crisis for an 89 year old mother from up the East Coast, she didn't seem to agree it was such a blessing.

Still, I know her parents and they're delightful people. Hopefully Obituary Dave won't be reporting on them any time soon.