Karl August Schulze

Turns out my dad died exactly thirty years ago today, when I was twenty-two . . . and way too young. But then the story I’d gotten was that his father died young, and so Dad had convinced himself that he would too.
     Not the best lesson for me, and so I took to telling people he’d died in his 49th year, in fear of turning fifty—a joke, I thought, until I found myself approaching that very same deadline, only to discover that, in fact, he had died at 47.
     I’d made it, I thought, and with plenty of time to spare.

Photo from DistantCousin.com.