Today I had lunch with two of my classmates from the Palmerton High School Class of 60. Another classmate of ours sent us his most up-to-date list of our fellow students, including those who have died. He has the addresses, phones, and emails of those remaining, but about 30 have no emails, and about six have no phones.
He asked the three of us to contact the ones who don’t have emails to see if they are still alive. The ones who don’t have phones we can write to. If the phone numbers are no longer valid, we can check obituaries.
We speculated what to say if a spouse answers the phone. Do we say,”Is Henry dead?” We came up with better phrasing, but the point is that in 20 years probably everyone on that list will have died. We know it, and we accept it. I thought about that on the way home. When you hit your eighties, you are aware that you don’t have a whole lot of time left. It doesn’t seem all that big a deal.
