In his poignant 1994 biography of the World War II Royal Air Force hero Guy Gibson, Richard Morris told how the celebrated leader of the “Dam Busters” squadron, on a morale-boosting tour of North America in 1943, received news that the rest of his bomber crew had been killed on a subsequent mission flying over Germany: “[H]e might have been with them…Through cocktail-party chatter, Fate was eyeing him across the room.”

I know how he felt, sort of.

Of course, Guy Gibson was a young man serving in military combat operations during wartime, whereas I am a middle-aged civilian who works in an office, and the latest statistics show that Canadians’ life expectancy now sits at a healthy 81 years. Nevertheless, I’ve been noticing an increasing roster of contemporary casualties – former colleagues and classmates whose obituaries I’ve stumbled across while looking up something else; the occasional public figure recalled from childhood; even parents of my own kids’ friends – reminding me that all of our numbers come up eventually. Nobody I know is risking their life in battle, but everybody I know is doomed. Though my parents and grandparents lived out their natural terms, the deaths of acquaintances or old buddies in their forties and fifties suggest that some people arrive early at everyone’s final destination.

Past a certain point, in other words, death is not a tragedy but an ordinary part of life. There’s a family story about an elderly great uncle, phoned with news that his brother (my grandfather) had died, could only remark, “There goes another one!” Yet it is in these years that such tidings still come as a surprise: the expiries of active, forward-looking people I’d seen recently and might have reasonably expected to see again, or of distant people I might have reconnected with after many years to find them older but otherwise still engaged with the world. Nope. And contrary to the morbid conceits of teenage goths and metalheads – I can’t wait to see everyone’s faces when they find out I’ve killed myself! – the eternal, irrevocable permanence of death is now harder to deny. I used to feel like a citizen; more and more, I’m feeling like a survivor. Like Guy Gibson, Fate seems to be checking me out, big-time.

Those truisms about treasuring every moment and never parting in anger are true for a reason. The longer you live, perhaps, the shorter life seems. In my experience, there’s a gathering crowd for whom it’s been short enough already. Whatever your expectations of a hereafter – or if you expect there’s one at all – the mounting numbers of those who’ve gone over to it are a useful reminder to stay on good terms with everyone still on this side. Meanwhile, reserved spots are filling up at the reunion. Asked if he feared death, Guy Gibson replied, “No, not really. All my friends are up there waiting for me. When the time comes I shall be quite pleased to see them.”