Endings come in many forms

I have been thinking about endings lately.

Dennis Hopper died over the weekend. Being that the actor was 20 years older than me, I can't really call him a contemporary of mine. But he was one of the first cool guys I saw on the silver screen at an impressionable age. He was Peter Fonda's sidekick in Easy Rider. He was more rebellious than Fonda. More anti-establishment, in my opinion, both in the movies and in real life. He didn't have the Fonda lineage and was more self-made. Through all his troubles, there was something authentic about Hopper, just as there is something authentic about Sean Penn, Robert Downey Jr. and the reborn Mickey Rourke. Authenticity can often get you in trouble, but at least it's honest.

There have been a few celebrity deaths in recent days, including Ali-Ollie Woodson, the one-time lead singer of The Temptations. Woodson was 58, a bit closer to my age. He died of cancer, the same disease that took my father in his mid 50s. Whenever I hear of someone dying of cancer at midlife, I cringe just a bit.

Gary Coleman, who I didn't really care much for as a performer, also passed away in recent days. He was 42. Chris Haney, a journalist and co-creator of Trivial Pursuit, died at 59 on Monday. His game always made me feel intellectually inferior.

I suspect some bigger names will be moving on soon -- actors, musicians, politicians, cultural icons who did have some influence in my life, at least more so than Hopper, Woodson, Haney and Coleman.

Today we are made aware of another ending. The end of the Al and Tipper Gore marriage after 40 years. Here they are early in their lives, when everything was in front of them -- presidential campaigns, environmental causes and so forth. Don't we all have photos like this stuffed in a forgotten box? Apparently, the couple grew apart. One has to wonder how that happens after four decades. Yet, it's not exactly a rarity because we all change so much over a lifetime. Most just grow apart much sooner.

A former colleague of mine just ended what he calls the "best year of his life." He quit his job last year and did a lot of the things he couldn't do while working. He traveled for pleasure, started a blog, spent more time with his wife, took walks, reconnected with simple but important stuff. He took a huge risk in giving up a well-paying job at the height of the recession. He's about my age. It's been ironic that his year off from work as been the best year of his life while mine has been one of the worst. Of course, my year off hasn't been a voluntary one. We all like to have some say about important things in our lives, like when to end our careers. It kind of changes how you view things when someone or something makes important decisions for you.

People in the Gulf of Mexico are talking about the end. The end of a way of life. With about a third of the gulf now closed to fishing because of the BP oil spill, lives are being permanently altered and some marine creatures are facing a dreadful conclusion.

People often talk about life being a series of changes. But in my view, life is more about endings. The end of a career, friendships, hobbies, health, etc., that steer those changes. Those losses are sometimes substituted with new things (good and bad), but more often than not, endings are just that -- the end.