The Deaths Have Started

The deaths have started.
Not the ones you have expected for years.
Grandparents, parents.
Sad and profound.  Grieving time needed to recover.

Not those deaths, but the ones you thought couldn't/ wouldn't happen.
Your siblings, your cousins,  your high school love,  the maid of honor at your wedding.
 YOUR PEERS.
Your equals.  Your age, your sex, your same history of music and pop culture.
You share the same jokes, the same cringe moments, the same absurd teen-age clothes.
That's who's  beginning to die.
And you mourn them and honor them and miss them horribly.

But there is another layer to this sorrow.
It is that intimation, that echoe, that wisp of awareness that you are part of this group.
There comes a slight feeling that you are waiting in line and can't step out.

A new stage of life.