Why am I so sad that Chandler Bing is dead?

May the sofa never be truly empty.

I felt a personal connection to Friends from the beginning — co-creator David Crane was a local boy made good, and he graduated from the same high school my 3 kids did in Ardmore, PA. (Like I told them, encouraging them to dream big: “He sat his butt where you sit your butts!”) David’s dad, Gene Crane, was a well-beloved local TV weatherman who we saw on…