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A few years back, I joined a group on Facebook for people who graduated from Dedham High School but have since passed away. This didn't sound like a great experience to me, and it isn't, but one of my best friends, who graduated alongside me at DHS, told me I should join. So I did. And I mostly regret it. As you might imagine, it's a never-ending cavalcade of terrible. I wince and mention it to Stephanie every time I come across a post. Misery loves company.

Death is a curious thing. It can strike at any time, early or late, and seemingly without reason. You can do all the right things from a health and wellness perspective and pass away while young. And you can smoke and over-drink your entire life and outlive everyone around you. There's no sense to it, it's just an unavoidable fact, looming over us and mocking us with the certainty of it happening and the paradoxical uncertainty of when.

By the time I graduated, in 1985, we had already lost a few members of our class. One in elementary school, an accident, and a loss I always felt viscerally because she was from my neighborhood, and we had fun together at summer day camp. The other occurred in high school, also an accident, but this one self-inflicted with alcohol and the stupidity of youth. There was a notable suicide post-high school. And then a long pause, unless I missed something, which is entirely possible. And then suddenly a lot of activity. The class of 1985 is getting up there in years. It happens.

By the late 2010s, the losses started feeling more personal. There was the jokester I played basketball with in high school, who was gleefully faux-outraged that I could dunk a basketball and would sometimes yell "2 points is 2 points" to me when he scored from a lot closer to the ground. There were people I was passingly familiar with, but had few or new classes with. And then some I knew all too well. We learned belatedly of the death of a handicapped classmate, a kind soul who had left us back in 1997, too long ago. And teachers, too. Of course. They are even older than we are.

And it was because of the recent passing of a teacher I did not have or know that something good finally came out of this terrible but necessary group. My favorite teacher of all time--and I am pleased to say that I had several excellent teachers I still remember fondly--commented on this post. This brought up some incredible memories. You may know that I created books--including comics--and made pretend radio recordings through high school, and that I find it oddly coincidental that I went on to become a writer of many books and a podcaster. Anyway, starting in the 7th grade, I wrote a set of comic books in which this favorite teacher was a bumbling but lovable superhero. I spread it around our Junior High School, as it was called at the time, and everyone signed it and wrote comments. And on the last day of the 8th grade, I gave it to him as a thank-you gift.

And then I haven't really seen him...