Browsing through greeting cards recently, my wife fell into conversation with the card clerk replenishing the supply. The lady commented that Valentine s Day had always been her favorite holiday, but that now, with her husband and most of her friends dead, she had no one left to whom to send cards. We feel similar sadness each winter when we check our Christmas card mailing list and find it diminishing, shortening itself annually by natural attrition. My own mother, who used to keep me informed about deaths in the community, seldom has much to report any more because the obituary names are mostly of people she never knew. Sometimes it almost seems that the major activity after age-50 is saying goodbye.
Parents say goodbye to offspring who leave the nest and enter adulthood.
Friends retire and move away. Relatives and friends die. Some that survive suffer from memory loss and, in their own way, have said farewell. Up in NC, a fraternity brother of mine dropped dead in October of a heart attack, ironically while walking on a treadmill for his health. He retired in March.