What an interesting observation! You are right... My intent was to write about the numbness I feel at friends dying, now. It has happened so much in the last 10+ years or so, it doesn't have as shattering of an effect on me as it once did. I wonder if my atheist/humanist belief system has something to do with it. I see death as purely mechanical... there is no afterlife, nothing that is identifiable as "us" survives death, in my worldview. So once their switch turns off... it is up to me how to process it. There is no worrying about them, or their afterlife, or anything like that, because I don't believe it exists. I wonder if that makes me process the experience of death differently... I couldn't help but notice ... that you shifted from first person to second.