The BYU Magazine is a publication sent out to alumni of the school--usually full of articles based on scholarship from professors, articles about events on campus, and news stories about alumni who have accomplished something unique.  

The first thing I do, when I receive that magazine in the mail, is check the obituaries.  I do this because I found a friend in there once by accident.  I hadn't talked to him in two years or so, and he'd died six months earlier climbing a mountain.  I hadn't known.  When I emailed my old roommates who had also known him, none of them had heard either.  I remember looking at his name there at the bottom of the list in tiny type.  This couldn't be my friend, I thought.  But his name was unusual.  There just couldn't be another one.  And then I googled him, and sure enough, there he was, smiling at me out of the news story.

Now I always check the obituaries first thing.  They list the alumni by year of graduation, and so the list of alumni who graduated in the 30's and 40's and 50's who have died is very long, and the number gets shorter by the decade.  There's usually three or four names in there who hadn't graduated yet, and one or two who graduated around the same time I did.  

I'm not sure what pulls me to those obituaries.  It doesn't feel morbid.  It doesn't feel like fear.  I think the pull is much like the pull that leads me to look old friends up on facebook and add them to my friends list--just so I can keep track of them.  I want to know what's going on in their lives, even if contact is limited.  I don't like the idea that someone I was once friends with can die, and I might not even know about it.  I've had a lot of friends over the years.  I couldn't possibly have stayed good friends with them all.  But I miss knowing what's happening with many of them, and so I collect blog links, I use facebook, I check the obituaries.  These habits seem strange to me, but it makes me feel better, like I'm still part of this larger community, even if my life has moved on.

Knowing what's happening doesn't change anything.  But it still makes me feel better to know.