People die all the time, obviously, and many people have died unexpectedly in the last two years. Still, Margaret and I were set back a pace or two by the news that our friend from Evanston days Mark McIntosh had died, in the same day that Sir David Amess was murdered, and my sister in the Sodality of Mary, Ade Lawal. Though we knew nothing about Sir David before yesterday, the convergence feels a bit like an inflection point, a time when ‘one of our friends died’ changes from an unusual circumstance to being an almost-expected part of our experience, a transition from the last vestiges of summertime to real autumn, with nightly reminders of winter coming.