Today's episode is sort of going to be about death.

If this is a topic that you would rather not listen to, I invite you to push pause, push stop,

find an older episode of walking as fitness, maybe one from the summer if you're walking in

really cold weather right now, that'll warm you up. But I just want you to be aware of where

we're going with today's episode. Welcome to Walking is Fitness. This is a podcast of action,

providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made to

yourself. Hi, I'm Dave. I started walking for fitness in 2013, and I still take an intentional

fitness walk every single day. I'm walking right now, and I would love to have you join me

for the next 10 minutes.

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to obituaries.

And when we still got a physical newspaper, when I still got a physical newspaper, the death notices that were in the classified section. Now, the obituary, that's a professionally written account of someone's life.

The death notice is simply a notice usually paid for by a funeral home that includes your name, date of death family members, and then service times and

viewing times and that sort of thing. This is probably 30 years ago. I was eating lunch,

had the newspaper, it was the local newspaper, spread open, there were the death notices. I'm not entirely sure what I was looking for.

Maybe it was just, I don't know, maybe it was my name because that's what I found.

I found the death notice for David Paul.

Names of his family members were all different.

His middle name was also different.

So even the middle initial there on the death notice was different from mine.

But still, it's like, well, there I am.

You know, when you see your name in a death notice, it grabs your attention.

The following day, we actually got a phone call from a woman on the other side of the country.

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