Return to Sender

My parents have a new "hobby", a rather morbid one that all old people seem to practice: checking the death notices in their newspaper first. On Christmas Day they were rather upset that an artist colleague who lived alone had died at the age of 84 and it took a few phone calls to find out that he had not in fact died alone (and potentially undetected for a few days) in his flat, but in hospital where a doctor friend had referred him to."Did X also send us a Christmas card?" followed by "No, but maybe she/he hasn't received our card yet and therefore didn't bother sending one" has also been a repeated topic in recent days. Not hearing or reading back from people of a certain age is inevitably a bad sign. Mum also keeps saying that the "active" contacts in her address book have dwindled, but she keeps names and details of deceased friends and family in it anyway. It must be rather sobering to have this constant reminder of "I'm probably next" and I sometimes think that since I'm only 25 years younger than my mother I might be engaging in this type of morbid smalltalk with Highflyer in two decades or so...if we are lucky to live to 70+, of course.