The Funerals at Midlife

I never realized as a child or even as a teenager what my parents must have gone through losing classmates and friends and their parents. I realized their pain as I became a mother myself and was old enough at that point to understand the sting of losing friends. It was a parallel; the older they became the more of their friends and family members they lost. Of course my parents were fortunate enough to live into their eighties. But was it fortune? It had to become a sort of lonliness that multiplied as your best friends, your parents, and even aquaintenences pass on. I know one man, a friend to my parents (who are now both gone) approaching 80, who exemplifies my thought. He asked, "Whose going to come to my funeral?" He has buried his parents, sisters and brothers and friends. I think as one approaches midlife, it begins to really 'sink in'. The midlife funerals. A time when one realizes the brevity of life and the gift that it really is.