Lately it feels like death is circling closer, and the circle is tightening faster than I expected.
It started with the expected ones: aging parents slipping away, old neighbors we’d wave to as kids, an elderly Lodge Brother after a long illness. Those hit hard, but they felt… almost in order. Part of the natural progression.
But now the pattern has shifted. Increasingly, the losses are people my own age—mid-40s, early 50s—or sometimes younger. An ex-girlfriend gone suddenly from what was supposed to be a routine procedure. A roommate from college who posted about feeling “off” one week and was gone the next from a brain tumor. Another gamer taken down with kidney disease.A friend I used to spend evenings discussing life with, taken by a liver thing that came out of nowhere. Most succumbing to health issues, some to injury, and sadly a few to suicide. One dear friend who just gave up on life and silently let the darkness win. Each one lands heavier, more personal, more bewildering.
I keep turning it over in my head at 3 a.m this morning: Is this the lingering shadow of the pandemic years? The lockdowns that made people delay check-ups, skip screenings, let stress and isolation compound quietly? The way hospitals were overwhelmed, or how “elective” care got pushed aside until it wasn’t elective anymore? Or is it simpler, and sadder—I’ve just reached that age where the people I’ve known my whole life, my peers included, are quietly entering the twilight of theirs? Where mortality stops being abstract and starts showing up in group chats and solemn conversations.
Both explanations feel true at once. Both feel insufficient. The numbers might say one thing statistically, but the lived reality is this steady drumbeat of absence.
Anyone else noticing the same shift? The way the obituaries now include names you recognize from your own timeline, not just your parents’? How are you carrying it?