Lynn received her first condolences for the loss of her husband today. A man we know from our college days runs a weekly newsletter. Lynn and I have separate email accounts but some married couples use just one address for any email to either or both of them. She wrote to that editor and asked to get a separate copy directly to her own email account. This man is familiar with the format "Mr. and Mrs. X" for the name of a contact and he had entered the email address for me in that way.
When he got her request that a copy of his newsletter be sent to her own account, he assumed I had died. I haven't yet. We had no idea that he assumed there was only one of us left. We called to request separate copies with no idea that he had deduced my death. We called after getting a message expressing condolences. We didn't understand what sort of condolences we were receiving and wanted to know.
When you are dealing with elderly people, there is indeed a higher chance that somebody has died. It is not that unexpected. Today was our first experience of receiving sympathy for the loss of one of us. I have heard of instances of people being the subject of a funeral but not actually being dead. Cases like that of attending one's own funeral in a live state are probably quite rare these days because of embalming or cremation.
Not long ago, I was leaving a restaurant and a young woman at a nearby table exclaimed, "Dr. Kirby! I thought you were dead!" I admit that sometimes I don't look so good, but we don't need condolences just yet.
