I have been thinking about the fact that over the past ten years quite a number of good friends, several from my childhood, have died.  This shouldn’t be all that surprising.  I am sixty-two years old, a senior citizen.  That’s the time of life in which lots of people die.

I’ll have to admit that the reality of becoming a “senior citizen” has sort of sneaked up on me.  At every turn I am amazed at how some public figure, a singer perhaps, that I admired at the beginning of my teaching and singing career is now . . . (how else can I say it?) . . . elderly!!

It is very hard to deal with the reality that I will never see Bill Byrd or Dick Stagner or Scott Tyra again in this life.  We weren’t finished with one another.  I hadn’t spent enough time with them, in person or virtually, in the past many years.  That makes the pain of loss quite a bit greater.

It drives home the words of Wilder:

       “It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another . . . . Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you . . . . Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?  No.  The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.”

   We’ve got to do better in the time we have.  At least I know I need to do so.