To cap off a really lousy last couple of weeks, a friend and I, both ardent fans of the late rocker Tom Petty, were trying to come to grips with his death. As with anyone who loves listening to music, there are certain songs that can whisk you away in a moment to another time and place, and perhaps a specific song had given solace during a particularly difficult time. It had for my friend, which made Petty’s passing feel even more personal.

“But how nice,” I said in attempted consolation after forwarding her Petty’s last interview, days before his untimely death at 66 from cardiac arrest, “that he was so happy.”

In the Los Angeles Times article he was in a great place: he’d just finished his sold-out tour gaining true validation for his 40-year stint with his band The Heartbreakers, and was telling the journalist that he was working on a number of exciting projects.

He even mused that he looked and felt much younger than his peers who no longer worked so diligently. Above everything else, he said he was also looking forward to spending more time with his young granddaughter.

Then … found unresponsive on the floor of his Malibu home, he was a victim of massive cardiac arrest. There was to be so much more, the article stated solemnly. There was supposed to be so much more. Sometimes it seems like all the Rock icons of my generation are falling like dominoes: Bowie, Gregg Allman, Prince, Glenn Frey…

And yet, Keith Richards thrives.

I don’t get it, I just don’t get it. Does heroin have some sort of undiscovered superfood properties? Antioxidant qualities? I mean, the Stones’ guitarist not only reportedly had his blood ‘filtered’ in Switzerland because it had become so toxic, but in his autobiography wrote about a time when he was given heroin that was laced with strychnine, putting him in a wide awake coma for two days, entirely aware of everything around him, but unable to move.

“He’s dead, he’s dead,” he wrote of those who were with him saying, “(they were) waving their fingers and pushing me about and I was thinking, ‘I’m not dead!’”

But that’s nothing compared to him nearly being killed as an infant by Hitler’s bombs raining down on his crib in 1944 London, or electrocuting himself on stage in 1965 after trying to knock the standing microphone around to face him with the neck of his guitar. Knocked out cold after an enormous blue bolt shot through his body, he came around only to find his guitar strings seared and claimed his rubber-soled boots had saved him.

The ‘70s weren’t any kinder: he set one bed on fire with a cigarette, and a second time set the entire house on fire, although he wrote that one was caused by a mouse that had chewed through the wiring.

Illustrating that the rocker has a rather inquisitive brain when it is actually intact, in 1998 while standing on a chair in the library of his home, Richards tried to pull down a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s study of anatomy, lost his footing, and pulled a collection of heavy books down on top of him, breaking three ribs and postponing the band’s tour.

At an age when most people are considering retirement communities, in 2006 Keith was vacationing on the island of Fiji with his family, and took it upon himself to climb up a 40-foot palm tree to knock some coconuts to the ground. Coming down, he lost his balance and hit his head, fracturing his skull and requiring brain surgery. It should be said he waited two days before seeing a doctor and only went after he could no longer bear a blinding headache.

Talk about nine lives, although the only feline character I can think of that he resembles is Bill the Cat.

Because, come on, Keith looks awful. Every photo I’ve ever seen of him contains a cigarette between his fingers and a wry grin cracked across his weathered face that is so deeply lined you could plant corn in his crow’s feet.

But you know what? I don’t think he cares. Which is the beauty of Keith Richards and probably one of the secrets to his longevity against all odds. He loves his music and his family and could give a toss about the way he looks. Which is the only life-lesson I’ve learned from him. In fact, he probably never even looks in a mirror.

But if he does, I’m pretty sure he won’t see a reflection.