As The World Shrinks

I'm certain many feel this way.

As I age and watched death consume family and friends, Vickie being the most painful, I find myself occasionally looking into those from the past. Each time I find someone has passed my world feels smaller. This past year I discovered an aunt a cousin and my fathers best friend passed away over the past several years. Today I discovered my first wife died in November of 2020. She was 65. She was a medical scientist and died 1 year after retiring. We parted on good terms but didn't keep in touch. For me when it's over it's over. But it still made my world even smaller. I did keep in touch with her mom for a while however. Yes I got along well with my mother-in-law. I learned today she passed in 2010.
They don't have to be in our lives to feel the loss. Each one learned to be gone shrinks my world. I've been doing it alone for 2 years come next Tuesday yet the days each of them were there is still remembered.

The world continues to shrink yet to discover who else has left this world. Death is finality to those of us remaining.

FreddieUK · 70-79, M

I understand it as a time of life we are now at. My friends only recently sat and discussed how we are attending more funeral/memorial events than before. The difference is that when we were younger, the loss of a friend was devastating because they, too, were young and gone before their natural span. These days if they are the same age as me, it's very though provoking, but if in their 80 or 90s one can somehow reflect that they had a full life and be glad for it. But truly, the loss of close ones does, as you say, diminish our world.