Another day, another preventable death of someone under 40.

Not someone I knew personally...the boyfriend of a friend. Found in a parking lot...my guess is he od'd. Which brings the tally of young casualties I have one degree of separation from/knew personally up to:

3 overdose deaths
4 suicides
3 drunk driving accidents
1 police shootout
1 murder (committed by a self-medicated vet with PTSD)

Of those I personally knew five. Three were good friends. One was my first love, maybe the love of my life. I am 31 and these are all within the last nine years.

I don't know what it means statistically. I don't know if anything can be done about it. I don't know if the thread of hopelessness and broken dreams that I see tying these deaths together is real or just some effort to give myself the idea that I can do something meaningful about it. Right now I guess I'm just trying to process it.