As noted, my son died December 3, age 39, leaving me quite shot up. Now handling his probate, and among his assets were a storage area that contained virtually all the contents of his mother’s house in Virginia — she died of cancer in 2003. So I’m cleaning that out, sorting out the keepsakes from things to dispose of (the movers even packed up the cleaning supplies under sinks and a bottle of wine — probably not improved by 20 or so Arizona summers in a sheet metal storage area with no AC). A lot of stuff was handed down from her father, who was my best friend when he died in 1985, in Maryland, of a heart attack.
Then a week ago this last Monday my closest friend today, John Sando, died. He had been healthy a vigorous, but had a fall in his bathroom, took serious neck and closed-head brain injuries, and had been in ICUs since May 12. Pneumonia finally got him. Two days after that another close friend, Paula Davidon, wife of my good friend Alan Davidon, died in a hospice of cancer. I’d known them for 50+ years, and Sando for 49 years. Alan and I went to law school together, and Sando was the law partner who coached me in my first civil trial, when we were both in our 20s.