One of my godfathers died last night. He had been admitted to the hospital during a weekend trip because he had fallen during the night and woken up in pain. X-rays revealed a massive tumor on one of his lungs, and he died - we think of pneumonia - a day or two later.

Two weeks ago, he and his wife and my parents and their friend Doug met in Boston to spend a few days together (I joined them for dinner one night). Talking to my parents this evening, each of us voiced some variation of "and we just saw him so recently!" My dad thinks this is because when someone dies, we imagine that there are corresponding physical signs which we would have noticed (and what, warned him of?). But it would be a similar shock if he had been killed in a car accident on the way home from the dinner. We just saw him. This leads me to believe that either we have some idea of iminent death as noticeable, or we imagine that there is something talismanic about being with our loved ones. Validity aside, I find it comforting that this is how we feel, for reasons I can't quite identify.