Time Is Slipping By

As many of you know, a dear friend of mine passed away suddenly in early April.  Since 1961 we had been good friends so to have her suddenly gone 59 years later was a blow.  

Since Nancy’s death I have been thinking of her a lot and dwelling on the friendship and the memories.  I often find myself, in my head, making a comment to her or wishing to hear her voice one more time.  Her passing has also led to me contemplating life and our passage through it more than usual.  

Death of course is around us all the time.  Some of us have close personal experiences…but for the most part, in our culture today, death is pretty much removed from our daily lives.  It isn’t like back in the day when hospitals were few and far between and we aged with our families in our homes.  

Some of us do have close experiences.  Soldiers on the battlefield comes to mind.  EMT workers and police see it more than the average person.  On occasion we are there when a loved one passes, I was with my Mom when she passed.  

And there are so many different circumstances.  We expect our parents to pass before us. I for one did not grieve excessively when Mom or Dad passed.  They were both in their late 80’s, they knew they were loved and well cared for, they had led fulfilling lives.  Death comes as it should in those circumstances.  

The surprises are the accidents.  The times when a young child dies unexpectedly from a previously undetected birth defect.  The diseases like cancer that takes so many lives before their natural end.

But the element of death that pauses me the most is when it strikes so close to home, in my generation.  Nancy’s passing is the prime example.  We grew up together.  Our lives took dramatically different paths, but our hearts were always linked.  And somehow her passing brings my own mortality more clearly in focus.  

No, I am not being morbid and I am not unnaturally focused on her passing, but I do have time to think about lots of different things, and this is one topic that is currently on my plate.  

Time is slipping by.