Whenever I read about or hear of a classmate who has passed away it makes me sad.

I feel the same way whenever any former schoolmate or friend dies. It’s my “no man is an island” perspective, it seems.

During the Great War, the Brits and Aussies would say a mate had “gone west.” Into the sunset, I surmise.

Losing a close friend, a dear friend, a childhood chum, really affects me.

You might say such reactions are at least in part because it reminds me of my own mortality. But it’s much more than that.

Of course, one can’t help but be aware of the lengthening shadows of one’s own life. That’s simply a natural response, I suppose. But my deep-down feelings are sadness because another life has come to an end. Truly.

For those of us blessed with a full measure of longevity, we naturally see, know, become aware of, the end of the journey for so very many. Some, too many it seems, had less than that full measure of this miracle we call life. Why this is the way of it remains a conundrum. How little, how very little, we truly understand.

And yes, I know that there are those who strongly embrace a religious tradition, and from this say they have an understanding of the mystery of life. They say they derive this from faith. That there must be faith.

Good for them, I say. Whatever “works,” absent empirical knowledge. Most religions require “faith” as an explanation for the inexplicable. Christianity is certainly not unique in this regard.

Yet, whatever one’s religious persuasion, whatever one’s faith means to a person — or lack thereof — noting the passing of someone who has been a part of one’s own journey evokes a sadness, a sense of irreplaceable loss.

I am often reminded of Thomas More’s soliloquy in Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons:”

“Death comes for us all. Even at our birth, even at our birth it does but stand aside and muses to itself whether it will draw near that day or the next. It is the law of nature, and the will of God.”

And so it is.