Two weeks ago my friend Scott died suddenly. Two days ago my friend Charlie also died suddenly. I’d been mostly out of touch with both of them—Scott for a couple of years and Charlie for a couple of decades save for his trip here last spring for SXSW, when we reunited over Ethiopian food along with Chad, whose wife died suddenly five years ago. Chad and Charlie and Scott and I were all, I think, born in 1964, making us not terribly old. But perhaps, as some friends have speculated aloud upon hearing news of these deaths—and I have speculated, too—it’s getting to be “that time.” That time being, of course, when news of dying peers is going to become more common. more ›