Since my best friend met her untimely end under the wheels of a semi four months ago, I have reflected on the many ways people die. It's very different for each of us, and explains why so many choose to take the guesswork out of it by handling it themselves.
In my own life I have been unfortunate in several ways, among them never meeting Tommy Lee Jones, never learning how to properly ice skate, and being forced to sit through the Broadway show "Cats" by a frugal date. Another way is that I have lost many friends in a variety of unsettling ways:
1. Eric L., age 6, hanged himself from the bathroom shower rod with his bathrobe belt. Sadly, a precocious 9-year-old, I defied adult warnings and ran in and saw him still hanging there. (His face was blue, as was his bathrobe.)
2. My 15-year-old babysitter Sis -- not her real name but that's what everyone called her-- was accidentally shot dead in her garage (which was right next door to our house) by her brother Billy who was cleaning his rifle. This also happened in my ninth year.
3. Marianne C., 34, stepped out of the 4-seat prop plane she was traveling in with her pilot boyfriend and her mother in the back seat when they stopped to refuel. Quite myopic, for some reason she was not wearing her glasses and walked into the still-rotating propellor. (Use your imagination.)
4. Susan D., an artist like myself with whom I shared many enjoyable escapades in my mid-twenties and thirties, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died at age 50. Along the way she lost the ability to see, speak, walk or do anything.
5. BethAnn T., another artist, got lung cancer. It was fairly quick. She was about 50.
6. Noreen W., a close friend and longtime confidante, lived for 13 months after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma and died at 53.
7. Bruce G., a co-worker I loved dearly and with whom I shared anchovy pizzas since nobody else in the office wanted them, was shot in the head entering his own front door while robbers were inside the house.
8. Sharon R., another co-worker at the same company, died at age 50 of Type 1 diabetes.
9. Rick W., my first husband and oldest friend, died alone in a hospital at age 72 of COPD after years of smoking.
10. David P., a beautiful and talented gay man who worked alongside me as a graphic designer in the art department of The Washington Times, died of AIDS at 33. It was early, before treatments had been found.
11. Debra S., 68, drove into the path of an 18-wheeled Freightliner in the mountains of Wyoming on a sunny summer day.
Excuse me if I'm feeling a bit down after reading about the death of Irene Cara, the beautiful young star of Fame who died today at age 63. I still remember her singing the words to the show's hit song: "I'm gonna live forever....."
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