It’s easy to talk about one’s own death. Really. Without rehashing old essays, death is simply what it is: The End.

My own gnashing of teeth, navel gazing, and pontificating about both this life’s and the after-life’s possibilities has had a deleterious* effect on seeing what is going on around me. To wit: Other people die, too.

It’s been a long time since someone close to me died which supplies a good, face-saving explanation for forgetting I am not alone in dirt-nap** activities and contemplation.

The reminder of this fact caused this essay. I had not heard from a local friend in months and inferred it may have been because of his own mortality. When he answered the door I knew my inference was wrong and a miffed-ness (sic) welled up inside me as I faced the fact he was simply ignoring me. The gall of it all. How could anyone ignore me?***

This “friend”**** was not my age, but close, so what was his problem? It couldn’t be normal ageism or stupidity.  He’s an educated, erudite man with both undergrad and advanced degrees from the Ivy League so maybe it’s a mismatch of intelligences(sic)? Was I not a good candidate for debates about the meaning of life? Or anything else?

Maybe, but his gaunt appearance ameliorated***** my miffiness, which is a real word so please google it. He looked tired and worn out as if he had been texting and talking with too many “friends”. He may have just gotten out of bed, as well, given the randomness of his hair. It all made me begin to feel “confuses”. Latin. Look it up, too.

We talked in his doorway. He neither invited me in nor did he make an effort to rid the frame of me, and there was no personal effort to even suggest a deeper intrusion. I simply, unabashedly hoped for an explication for the current denial of my existence.

After a few awkward moments of silence and hopefully a quizzical, unmiffed(sic) look from me, the answer finally came.

“Did you know,” he began. “My brother died last month?”

I have a brother. We aren’t very close emotionally, and live 1,000 miles apart. But my old friend, currently accused of the heinous crime of ignoring me, was very close to his brother. All of them, in fact. It was a large, close family who lived near each other for years until mother, father, oldest brother, and now next oldest brother passed away. The family is gone but for the one bedraggled survivor struggling to entertain me in his own doorway.

To bring it back to all about me, one of these days—as the younger brother–I may be in the same position. How would I react? Might I ignore an old friend’s attempts to talk? Might it not be ignorance, but simply untimely, as other issues take up time?

Let’s hope this old dog learned a new trick: empathy,…always.

Ai tells me—and yes, I asked—“approximately 8,466 people die every day in the United States, which averages out to about one person dying every 10 seconds.”

Bet each one has a story, including the 3,600 hundred who died since this essay began. (Writing time, not reading time.)

Also, why is Ai so fast with these facts? Ai up to something?

Oh, and who is next? Booowahhahahaha….

*Yes! I’ve tried for months to find a place to use this word.

**Apologies to members of the body-burners club, of which I am one.

***Joke, of course. Normal-aged people ignore senior-aged people of nature.

****Yes, typed with malice, but for the fictional construction of context, only.

*****See footnote 1.