A friend sent me an email today, asking how I was holding up. In addition, to the loss of mutual friend, he knew that I went to Virginia Tech, and wondered how the week’s events had affected me. My answer: “It seems everything I touch dies these days.”

There, I said what has been rattling in my head for too long. For a 30-something, post AIDS crisis, gay male, I have lost too many people that have very important to me, and many others that, while not having such a profound effect on my life, were no less important to me.

It all seemed to start when I was in college, when my best friend Aislinn died of a malignant brain tumor. She was the one who taught me to be who I was with no apologies. When she died, I wandered without a clear rudder for years. Her strong sense of individuality and her beautiful heart stay with me to this day, and give me the strength to be as eccentric as I damn want to be.

Three years ago, I lost the man who taught me to truly love. Again, we had met during high school, and probably had the purist love I’ve known. We eventually chose entirely different paths. Still, we remained in contact until his death. A few weeks before he died in a car accident, he left me a message and I was too busy to call him back. I’ll always regret not having that final moment to at least speak with him. There are so many memories of him which stay with me, but most often it is his wedding reception, where the two of us were alone outside sobbing on each others shoulders, after I said that things would not be the same.

A year later, my uncle Tom died of melanoma. Tom was the uncle of many I have that I was closest to as a kid. He and his wife had me and my sister stay with them one summer in Indiana. I was the ring bearer in his wedding, he patiently taught me to water ski (more accurately tried), he brought me to the state fair… but most of all his infectious sense of humor stays with me. Almost as much as my parents, he showed me what family really means and keeps me focused on what’s really important.

Scattered in between those over that past 12 years or so:

• A college friend succumbed to HIV-related illness
• Two coworkers died in a small plane accident
• Two friends have committed suicide
• Another uncle died of a sudden heart attack
• A cousin died in a motorcycle accident
• My next door neighbor succumbed to cancer
• Another neighbor died of lung cancer

Most recently, of course, Jeff.

The deaths of a few distant acquaintances seem to have added to my gloom. Over the past 7 years, I have not gone more than a year without a funeral or memorial service. Over the past two years, the average has been every six months.

The list of near misses, where I haven’t known if friends and family were going to pull through due to accidents, illnesses, and such, is too numerous to put up here. I seem to go from crisis to crisis with no time between the end of one and the start of another.

So, am I the grim reaper, or is life truly this messy?