BUFFALO, N.Y. — Aging tricenarian Colleen Myers admitted to being surprised by the sheer amount of conversations she is having about acquaintances passing when catching up with friends, those close to Myers who are still alive reported.
“You have that time in your 20s when you are shocked to hear about someone you went to school with who died in a car accident or drugs or whatever. It’s always a tragedy but you can make sense of it,” Myers said while attending a much postponed check-up with her doctor. “But now it is just so casual. It seems like every time I talk to someone I hear about people my age just dying… like, of natural causes. Their body would just stop working, and I’m afraid that can happen to me at any moment. I didn’t expect this to start happening at least until my 40s.”
Friends of Myers have taken notice of just how hard she seems to take the news of others’ passing.
“I actually didn’t even tell her about Gregory Wheeler’s heart attack. We used to play Nintendo in Greg’s basement, I just don’t think [Myers] could handle it,” said Heidi Parsons, a grade school friend of Myers, while attending another memorial service. “We are all struggling with getting older but Colleen is taking it harder than most. I remember always thinking it was weird that every time my parents ran into someone in the store or something all they would do is swap stories about someone who died. I guess we all become our parents eventually, but even when my parents were in their late 30s I thought they were nearly 100 years old.”
Noted Gerontologist Dr. Isabel Romero, PhD of Cornell University explained that this phase of life is something everyone goes through.
“It is the hallway gossip for adults, everyone wants to be the first person to pass around the news that someone even remotely tangentially close to them has died,” Romero explained. “We all reach this stage in life where the only interesting thing we have to talk about with other people is death and the weather. This has only gotten worse with the invention of social media where you find out about the passing of old classmates you otherwise wouldn’t have even thought about in twenty years.”
When reached for an update, Myers had taken a week of mental health leave after hearing someone she used to play soccer with, whose name she couldn’t recall, died while shoveling their driveway.