Lately, when I receive a copy of my college alumni association magazine, Michigan Alumnus, I immediately flip to the back and check out the Notes section. This is where they print a list of all the alums that have died. In that I graduated in 1992, it’s sort of weird for me to be looking at that section so closely, but I do. There are usually people from my class but thankfully, no one I had a close personal friendship with. I thought of this earlier today as I was browsing the Chicago Tribune while waiting for my takeout order. There in front of me was an ad for OrbitMessenger. It’s a service that allows you to receive daily emails about death notices that match a certain search criteria (i.e. last name, high school, town, association, etc.). It’s a great idea and could be quite helpful for genealogy purposes, but I couldn’t help but be creeped out by the whole thing. Here’s hoping that I never have to read a publication of any kind to find out that someone close to me died. More importantly, while I know that death is the final stage in the journey called life, here’s hoping that anyone of importance to me will live for many many more years to come. My mom died almost 10 years ago, and I sometime grieve for her like it just happened yesterday. As such, I can’t deal with any more loss in my life.