“Tell me something GOOD.”My mother sometimes answers the phone that way, when she has reached her limit of political bickering, Hollywood scandals, televised terrorist acts and heard-it-through-the-grapevine rumors about the terminal illnesses of acquaintances.I know the feeling. After a long stretch when all the obituaries I read were for total strangers, I’ve been hit by a string of Deaths That Demand A Response: a former neighbor (whose son-in-law had passed away only weeks before she did), a co-worker’s father, a lady I’d attended church with since I was six days old...Death notices make me self-conscious and force my rusty mental engines to lurch into motion. I beat myself up when illness, overcommitment or ignorance causes me to treat different losses so differently.