I’m not a morbid sort. Really.
Today is my 44th birthday, and being perennially plagued by a sense of underachievement, I have been looking at lists of folks who died at age 44.
Among those I found notable:
- Billie Holiday — July 17, 1959. Pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
- Jackson Pollock — August 11, 1956. A single-car crash, driving under the influence of alcohol.
- D. H. Lawrence — March 2, 1930. Complications of tuberculosis.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald — December 21, 1940. Heart attack.
- Baruch Spinoza — February 21, 1677. Lung illness, possibly silicosis as a result of breathing in glass dust from the lenses he ground.
Is there any comfort in having lived longer than John Candy, Natalie Wood, Bessie Smith, Knute Rockne, and Lorenzo de’ Medici?
