The End Of An Era

They call it middle age, as if a second half is guaranteed. I'd chosen to ignore my own impending appointment with this existential milestone until a message on my Samsung brought reality crashing down.

Harry was dead.

We'd gone to high school together in the 1980s and caroused in the early 1990s as grunge kids with Nirvana T-shirts and Doc Martens boots.

"Harry died of a heart attack," my friend Pat is talking from the other end of a video call, "he was only 53."

Pat's face is ashen. He looks sha...