The End of "Hamlet"

At the end of "Hamlet," everyone dies. It would be a literal bloodbath if some of the deaths weren't by way of poison instead of the sword.

I thought of the Bard's most famous play a lot in the past month, as I have literally been assaulted by news of people's deaths. Almost always people who were to young to die -- not that there is ever a good age, but you know what I mean. Some whom I didn't know, some whom I knew well, and every degree in between. Too many. The kind of events that makes you alternate between sadness and a sense of revolt: "f!@#, s$%^, why is this going on?"

My self-centered view of this started on Sep. 23, as I was talking to a colleague at the cafeteria of our offices in Clamart, outside Paris. He told me that a man whom I had casually known as a colleague for 30 years had died the week before, after a sudden relapse of a cancer he had fought off several years earlier. And then, as I was absorbing this, he asked me if I knew about another ex-colleague, who had left a few years back, was apparently working from home in the countryside, and had died of another long illness six months ago. I had not seen this man in many years, contrary to the first one, but this means that I could vividly remember him as his young self -- not only that, but I can even still hear his distinctive, constantly ironic tone of voice!

The next morning, as I walked into another one of our office locations, this one in Montrouge, I was greeted by two colleagues. We said hello and then, almost immediately, the woman went on: "Have you heard about M...?" When sentences start like that, you know what's coming. M..., a woman ex-colleague who was 58, had had a sudden heart attack (uncommon for a woman at that age), remained in the hospital for a while, and then died. So by now, that was three people whose passing away I was learning about in two days.

Back in Houston the following week, someone who actually used to work for M... was visiting for a training course, and invited me to have dinner. That was a nice chance to reconnect, as I hadn't seen him in two or three years. The last time was in a really ugly traffic jam at the end of the M4 coming into London, when I dropped him at an intersection where he could get on the Tube and I could turn around and go back to the airport (where I still missed my flight). We weren't in a panicked rush this time, and we ate a leisurely dinner at Churrasco's, an Argentinian steakhouse (the one near the Beltway, not the one near Montrose, for your locals). And then D... said, "oh, and by the way, did you know A...?" I did. Last time I had seen A..., in 2003, he had driven up from Houston to Austin, where I lived then, to discuss a project we were both working on. We spent the afternoon working together, then I took him to the Oasis to have a drink and watch the sunset over Lake Travis. When he left to drive back to Houston, we hugged and said "okay, let's make sure we see each other soon again." But A... left the company, and I had no chance to really remain in touch. And then D... dropped the bombshell: A..., who I think D... said was 35 years old, had accidentally killed himself just recently.

Six days later, on October 8, the "care page" maintained by my friend C... for his wife since she started her fight against inflammatory breast cancer four years ago took an ominous turn. There had been bad incidents before, and she had always come through. This time, after fighting infection and respiratory failure for days on end, she had just "crashed." The day went by, and early the next morning there was an urgent update: I opened it reluctantly -- she had passed away in the evening, at the age of 37. I will be going to a memorial service this week-end...

15 days, 5 deaths -- ranging from a dear friend to estranged colleagues. The last one was of course the one that affected me the most, but in some way the other deaths compounded the sense that something unusual had happened and that mortality wasn't just a concept.

Finally (for now), last week, while I was in Orlando at a conference, I got an email from one of the Stanford alumni with whom I work on alumni matters: a car carrying three business school alumni, aged 23, 24 and 29, had fallen off the road on the Pacific Coast Highway as they were on their way to a reunion in Big Sur. All three were killed. I didn't know them -- only one was listed among the members of the group I help manage, and I had never met him. Apart from the obviously tragic aspect of this event, this coming after the other five deaths seemed to continue a dramatic and improbable series.

People die all the time, of course. But in our age it's not often, absent wars or epidemics at home, that you hear about the deaths of 8 people, with whom you have some sort of connection, within a three-week period. Our ancestors had a sense of fatality about this -- all it took was an exceptionally harsh winter for people to fall like dominoes. But that was over 200 years ago.

I'm coming up on six days without hearing about another death. It would sound callous to say "I hope this series has come to an end" because it would seem to place my own mental comfort over the tragedy of these deaths and the anguish of those who have lost loved ones. All I can do is reflect on our fragile status, and cherish even more all the friends I still have among the living.

Bristol Palin's College Applications

Do you know why Bristol Palin is not planning to apply to the University of Southern California (USC)?

Because the campus newspaper is called the Daily Trojan.

(Yes, I made this up myself, and I am proud of it...)