I got home and my wife told me X “went for a stroll and dropped dead.”

I think she mentioned he was walking along the Danube. This would have been Sunday or Monday. We agreed he was about our age. Far too young to go dropping dead.

Heart attack. It turned out he was 56, not our age. Also: pacemaker. He looked good for someone 56 years old with a pacemaker. Now I have this image of his final moments: watching a swan, perhaps. Or a sunset. Some kid rolls past on a skateboard, yakking into his cellphone, “zzzt.”

He was a nice man. He worked in education. The news saddened us. It also made me think, “that was close.” It could have been me. That feeling was mitigated when I found out he was 12 years older than me. When I heard, “pacemaker,” death moved another step away, I told myself. I sat in the library with a glass of Bushmills and listened to the day’s overtones circle in my daughter’s harp. Then it got late and I had things to do.