Last year we met for lunch. One of the people there, who had just turned 70, was described as “a curmudgeon with a dry sense of humor” but someone who was generous to all and was the life of the party. Two weeks before our get together this year, I received a call from his former girlfriend, saying he had died unexpectedly from a heart aneurism. The memorial service was the day before our reunion. The next day an acquaintance in southern California called to say that his wife’s cancer, which had been in remission, suddenly returned and she had just died.

One of our friends was hiking in the Sierras last year so he couldn’t make it. In response to my e-mail this year, he wrote that he had a slight pain in the chest while in the Sierras followed by massive pain when he returned. He didn’t want to go to the hospital but his wife forced him. He ended up with quadruple heart bypass surgery. He nearly died but is now recovering.

Our reunion this year had considerably fewer people at it. Of the four men present, all in their sixties, two were now sporting canes, one was battling severe diabetes and overweight, and the last, a tennis player with newly reported osteoporosis on his hip was told by his doctor, “Just don’t fall.” The four women on the other hand seemed fine.

In the space of a year we men had gone from looking forward to the future to not having one or just trying to survive into it. What had happened to turn us from active guys into doddering old men, and how could only one year have done this?