I don't know if it's the fact that I'm getting older (and somewhat sicker) and therefore I think of thissort of thing more, or if it's about a fact that as time goes by I seem to lose so many people that were important to me, but I seem to be more interested in obits as I scan the paper these days. It seems more and more to me that it has been a hard year for all of us this year in terms of sickness and collective loss (people like Isaac Hayes, Tim Russert, George Carlin, Bo Diddley, and Robert Rausenberg) and, of course, not to mention the personal losses that we all experience from time to time.
Where the the occasional elder fell when I was younger, now these interruptions of the inevitable have become a more permanent, if unwelcome, part of life. Even though many of the notable people that have recently passed were in their 70's and even 80's, there is a sense that with their passing the world that I knew is coming to an end, leaving those of us in my generation naked in the face of history. We may be rapidly becoming the elders that we swore that we would never become ("Hope I die before I get old," screamed the Who in the '60's). The jury is still out as to whether we can become "elder" without becoming "old," but it is clear that we will be put to the test very soon.
And, as if to prove my point, today I learned that Leroy Sievers -- a man whose My Cancer blog on his experience with cancer became a daily reading ritual for me over the past year -- had finally slipped away after a heroic 3 year bout with colon cancer. Leroy was a major figure among those of us with cancer since he wrote about what it was like 5 days a week (he was a journalist by trade) and he stared the experience of having this fatal disease straight in the face and didn't blink. Day after day, he chronicled all the strangeness, issues, and conflicts that come with trying to manage something that literally is trying to eat you up and he did it with an openness that allowed others to become part of the conversation. He wrote in a way that was supportive to those of us who were unfortunately shanghaied into "Cancerworld," as he termed it and was educational for those who looked at the world from the outside. I'll miss his insights as a part of my day, as will hundreds that regularly frequented his writing. Leroy was 5 years younger than myself when he passed and this, in itself, gives me pause.
Maybe what I'm wondering is "what are we going to do without people like Leroy to light the way?" That's what's going through my mind as I scan the obits everyday. Is my generation up to the challenge? I hope so. It would help to have more people like Leroy.