Phillip Togni and the Transitoriness of All Things

While I was away overseas recently, a casual friend developed a brain tumour and died.
I was stunned.
And have been catching myself repeatedly thinking about the transitoriness of all things.
I usually drift (happily) from day to day without the sense of time passing or of moving unavoidably and finitely forward. As probably do we all. I have the feeling of things being cyclic and for ever, emotionally not cognitively of course!
The last time I was powerfully taken by these ideas was while and after watching the Bertolucci film 'The Sheltering Sky' (1990), based on the Paul Bowles 1949 novel. Set in the Moroccan desert, the central protagonists are New Yorkers Port and Kit Moresby trying to resolve their marriage, and their friend Tunner. But in this arid landscape, many of the comfortable and necessary illusions they have constructed for themselves are stripped away.
I was struck by the recurring theme of never knowing, when you are doing a thing, whether it is for the last time. There is the sense that there always will be another time/s - otherwise life's transitoriness can be unbearable.
So I began to wonder when I last saw Phillip. And couldn't. And the thought is uncomfortable. For more than one reason.