Sorry to hear of your losses. You are, apparently, as am I, at that inconvenient age when old friends and other acquaintances start going away on us, not by the slow hemorrhage caused by moving about the country chasing various careers and allegedly good ideas later proved good but sometimes false and by that process just drifting out of what passes for our self-awareness, but by people aging out. Lost two within the last month, and in the course of spreading the word about one of them discovered another was no longer with us. We are, as John Donne said, diminished.