GMA’s Robin Roberts interviewing Valerie Harper this morning. Two remarkable women who are willing to share their deepest thoughts with us.

When you get to our age, you really get nervous opening emails and texts because you never know what you will find. This week I was informed via mass email newsletters of the deaths of several people I knew. Twice Magazine, a leading trade publication in the consumer electronics industry, ran a headline that said, “CE Retail Mourns Three Of Its Own.”

First, your heart sinks as you quickly skim over the copy to see who they might be referring to. Then you check to see that your name is not mentioned just in case someone forgot to tell you that you were dead. Finally, you sit back and digest the news.

One of the three executives mentioned in the TWICE article, Dick Lewis, founder of New York’s Newmark & Lewis, was someone I actually knew well in the early part of my career. He died March 2nd at the age of 83. That was a pretty good age considering 46 years ago he told me that if I wrote a profile about him in the publication I worked for at the time, Home Furnishings Daily, he would drop dead on the spot. I am not sure what he was hiding (I must have missed some dirt somewhere), but he ended up taking the story and mounting it in the lobby of his office building.

The first thing I do every morning is open my iPhone, click on the New York Times, and then open the Obits. With one eye closed for fear of reading something that will be very upsetting, I scan the names while hoping that my name doesn’t appear. Then I realize I am a nobody so that is not going to happen, ever. I do spend time reading each new obituary wondering if each of the deceased realizes that they were as big in death as they were in life. “Hey, knock, knock, your death announcement made it into the New York Times.” Some people may not have thought you were special when you were alive, but now that you are dead you’re a big shot.” Appearing in The New York Times is a big coup.

I am wondering what Valerie Harper was thinking when she decided to go full public with her incurable brain cancer diagnosis. You all might not realize it, but she took quite a chance. It was very possible that no one would have picked up on it. Not every Hollywood star or public figure gets the recognition they deserve. Harper hasn’t been in the news for years. Many of the TV producers and newspaper writers were not even born when she played Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was gratifying to see that people still hold her in high regard. After being out of the limelight for decades, she gets to experience her popularity, see how successful her PR tour is going, and once again bask in the spotlight.