When you reach a certain age, and you hear from old friends, the news is just as likely to be bad as good.

You're not hearing about great grades in school, a new job or a new love. As often as not, the news is of deaths in the family, jobs that have been lost or outsourced or long-time relationships that have come to a sad end.

Sometimes it's even one friend telling you another has died.

I went hiking in San Antonio today just after getting some sad news from a friend I haven't seen in nearly 40 years. She used to hang out with us in the early '70s, until she met the love of her life and withdrew from our group. I believe they lived together for some years before they made it legal, so I don't know how long they were actually married.

I actually don't know much yet at all. I only know the terrible sadness that comes when love slides into indifference. I know that when love dies, it's usually not when people are yelling at each other and angry all the time. It's when there is nothing left to say and little or no desire to say it. The end of my failed first marriage was punctuated more by long silences than by anything else.

Of course I was 29 then, and if I didn't believe anything good would ever happen to me again, I knew that there was plenty of time. My friend is in her late 50s, and her relationship was far longer than mine.

Whenever I think of relationships ending, I think of Harry Chapin's wonderful song, "Last Stand." Of course Harry died nearly 30 years ago, but I love this YouTube video of his former bandmates performing it.

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A beautiful song, some sad thoughts.

To my friend, hold fast. It will get better.