Connections

We've all been there. Friends and family members die before their time. We mourn and come to know that death is something that can stop any of us at any time.

But there comes a time when those who die are your contemporaries, and there are more and more: when you know that the medical prognoses and actuarial tables are no longer very promising.

Two of my dearest friends died this year. The causes were different, to be sure, but losing them provoked the same emotions.

On Saturday, I called the oldest person among my friends, who is well into his 90s, to tell him of the latest death. After he expressed his surprise and sorrow that a man younger than he should have died first, I had the temerity to ask how he was feeling.

"You know," he said, "this is not a good time of life. You might say I'm progressing - moving ahead."

I would have responded that we all are, if he hadn't left me speechless. Moving forward toward the end, which probably will come to him before it does to me, but you never know.

On Friday, driving east at about 20 miles an hour in heavy traffic, I had just passed the perpendicular turn where County Road 39 becomes Montauk Highway. My thoughts were elsewhere. Suddenly, my car was headed for a collision with the car in front. I pulled to the right, hoping to make it to the shoulder instead of the car's rear end, but hit it pretty hard anyway. My car sustained considerable damage, although it remained drivable.

I wouldn't have announced anything like this to the world while my parents were alive, fearing they would worry too much or refuse to believe I was perfectly okay. Now there is no one left to hide such news from. More often, though, I've wanted to tell them things: news about their great-grandchildren, for example, and remembered with sadness that was impossible.

I'm not sure if I'll have similar impulses about the friends who died this year. But I wish there were some way that I could hold their hands.

Helen S. Rattray