I have experienced a couple of sad losses just lately.

Mortality is a finite state and the grim reaper will come for us all one day. He came for two of my very closest friends recently - and it's left a gap in my life that is proving difficult to fill.

David was a friend since our teens, we were of a similar age. He pursued a rather different academic route than mine... and ended up as a much respected teacher - then professor.

Sam enjoyed a charmed life since birth. Blessed with both loving and wealthy parents, he came from a family that had been in business since... well since almost the middle ages. Sam grew up a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke, with never a care in the world and a joke and a laugh for all occasions. Darkly handsome himself, he married a stunningly beautiful Italian girl and they produced three equally good looking kids, two boys and a girl.

Both friends made it into late middle age with little trouble and few health worries. Then, when David reached his mid-50s everything fell apart. After returning from a vacation in the Far East (Vietnam I believe it was) he began suffering back spasms, that didn't just go away. Eventually, his wife Josianne persuaded him to consult an orthopaedic consultant who, in turn, worryingly passed David along to an oncologist. He had apparently contracted liver cancer. Now just what back spasms have to do with liver disease is not immediately apparent, but there it was... the diagnosis we all fear: David was terminally ill... just like that.

He was actually given about six months, but expired in less than half that time - and  at the end he looked like a man in his mid-90s. For the last three weeks of his illness he was semi conscious and apparently in no pain. But then, at just 57 years and 62 days... he was gone. Obviously his death was expected... but not accepted, either by his family or by his many friends. He was one of life's good guys and he died far too soon.

Sam's case was quite different. Well aspects of it were. Strangely enough, his health problems also began when he returned from a vacation abroad. He initially thought he was suffering from Covid... then, when it persisted: long Covid. All tests proved negative and he began to recover both his strength and his joie de vivre. He seemed back to normal and he and I resumed our weekly lunch dates at our favourite restaurants. All seemed to be well... and then, it wasn't.

It was around 6pm when I received the call from Sam's wife, Angelina. She was straight and to the point: "Hi Lou, bad news I'm afraid... he's gone." Apparently Sam had arrived home early from work, intending to take the family to the beach. He went upstairs to change out of his formal work clothes; then, when he seemed to be taking rather a long time about it, Angelina went up to check and... found her husband stretched out on the bedroom floor - dead from a heart attack. When the ambulance arrived the paramedics tried, unsuccessfully, to revive Sam both at home and all the way to Mater Dei. The upshot being that he was declared dead on arrival at A & E.

So, in just a few months two of my very best friends had simply dropped off the planet - and it will take me some time to get my head around the fact.