Got a call the other day from a friend. She was in the hospital, naturally. After collapsing twice in in recent weeks, she needed a procedure to deal with her tachycardia.  

         Meanwhile, my brother-in-law is dealing with bone cancer. Another friend has had a bone marrow transplant because of his blood cancer. Still another friend is recovering slowly from a knee replacement. A fourth—or is it fifth? —friend recently completed his chemo regimen for prostate cancer. And well, yes, a couple of months ago I had a heart attack.

         Everywhere I look, it seems, there’s illness and there are bodies breaking down and I am reminded of the fragility of things, of the tenuousness of life when you get to a certain age.

         When I was a kid, I used to laugh at my parents always reading the obituaries in the daily newspapers, back when we had daily newspapers, and frequently noting how young someone who had just died was. How that person was younger than they were. I thought I would never do such an old-person thing.

         I now do such a thing.

         Matthew Perry died? He was only 54. Two decades younger than me!

         Suzanne Somers? She’s a year younger than me.

         Pee-Wee Herman. Vida Blue. Linda Kasabian. All younger than me.

         Then I begin to even notice the passing of the ones older than me but who felt like they weren’t that old, who felt like they were part of our generation, constant colleagues of our twenties and thirties.   

         Robbie Robertson of The Band. Willis Reed. Mary Quant. Newton Minow. I read their obituaries, and I was reminded of my father-in-law in his nineties, who said—every time a famous person of his generation died—“There’s no one left. They’re all gone.”

         I know we’re not all gone. Lots of people are living longer today than ever before. I know that Henry Kissinger, despite bombing the crap out of Cambodia, lived past 100. I know that Joyce Randolph, from that ancient TV sitcom, The Honeymooners, made it to 99. I know that Vic Seixas, a famous tennis player of my youth, is still alive at almost 101. Bill Leuchtenberg, a presidential historian whom I interviewed years ago, will soon be celebrating his 102nd birthday.

         Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, William Shatner, all still alive and maybe still kicking.

         That should be encouraging. And yet, when you get to your seventies, you start wondering why you haven’t heard from an old friend in a long time. You start hearing about someone falling at home, having to get an MRI or making a worrisome visit to the dermatologist.

         Bodies, including my own, are breaking down all around me, and I’m really not happy knowing about it all. I would rather not dwell on how fragile so many of us seem to have become, despite swimming five days a week, running half-marathons, doing tai-chi or buying low-sodium soy sauce.  

         But then again, I really don’t have much choice. None of us do. All we can do is just stop reading the damn obituaries.