When I was younger, I took note of how often my mother would check the obituaries in the daily paper and periodically call out to my dad that so-and-so had passed away and what a shame that was. For me, it always seemed to have a bit of a ghoulish feel to it, and I felt confident that it was something that I wouldn’t do myself when I got to her age, which would be never, so far away into the future as it seemed to me, a teenager at the time.

Over fifty years later, here I am doing that very thing, every single day. I do it online, and I check out the notices in the windows of print shops and flower stores. I think it has to do with the inevitability of things coming to a close in this realm. Sort of reminds me of a story in a literature book called Cranes Fly South, a story of an older gentleman coming to grips, in his way, with the inexorable march of time. Sad and poignant is what it was.

When I walk by the shop windows, I’ll always check out the obituaries displayed there, seeing who might have passed, whether I knew them, and generally making sure that they don’t have me up there. So far so good.

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