Oh Yes, It CAN Happen to You!

The most popular page in our local papers is the obituary page. Scranton, Pennsylvania has the second oldest population in the United States - and it seems as though the most pertinent news for much of the population is checking to see who they know that died today. Sadly, our senior citizens are coming to realize that it can happen to them, because it has already happened to so many other people that they know.

We younger folks are more cavalier about the whole thing. We seem to feel as though we possess some sort of invisible shield that protects us from the kinds of harms we read about others suffering. After all - they are people that we read about, not people we know well.

But that invisible shield is starting to crumble.

I can remember reading in the papers about someone being murdered, but feeling safe and secure in my own neighborhood (in Detroit!), where things like that just didn't happen. They happened to other people. The people you read about.

Then my cousin's sister-in-law was murdered in a Detroit parking lot. Someone I'd actually spoken to. Someone I had shared a meal with. And since I came to this area one of our students was murdered - and brothers of two others were convicted of murder. It happened right here. To people we know. People we see every day, interact with, talk about. No six degrees of separation here- try one degree. Or maybe no separation at all.

That shield starts to look more and more vulnerable.

I see the long columns of death notices in the daily paper,although I don't check them as avidly as the senior population. I'm accustomed to death notices. I've even written them. I was a funeral director's daughter. But suddenly I am coming to recognize the names that appear.

They are not my parents' friends. They are mine.

One of them was one of the six people who attended my wedding. We had lost track of him. And now we've lost him. The start of a long line of people I've done more than read about, I fear.

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