In a world enamored with digitized data and cold, hard statistics, one might assume that the mastery of numbers equates to the mastery of life itself. Welcome to the tragic narrative of Paula K. Hagedorn Diehr, an emblematic figure navigating the treacherous tides of biostatistics within the confines of an academic system increasingly obsessed with quantifiable outcomes. Here, in the shadow of her illustrious yet tragic career, we find ourselves in a realm where counting lives seems both a noble pursuit and a morbid spectacle. Imagine a day in the life of Paula Diehr, waking up to the chorus of algorithms whispering sweet nothings in the ear of public health. Each data point, each mapping of health care utilization, each calculation of healthy life expectancy—a resounding applause for numbers that echo across lecture halls and symposiums. Yet, beneath the applause lies a haunting irony: the very lives these numbers represent are rendered faceless, living merely in rows and columns as Paula painstakingly weaves their stories into an intricate tapestry of statistical significance. On any given day, Paula could stand at the intersection of health systems and population health, wielding her statistical prowess like a sword, slashing through misconceptions about aging and mental health. But as she gazes deeper into the abyss of her research, she encounters the echoes of lives lost in the shuffle of aggregated data. A paper detailing the longitudinal analysis of health care utilization may read like a groundbreaking revelation to her peers, but to Paula, it often transforms into a heartbreaking memorial for those who become mere numbers in the relentless march toward public health optimization. Consider, if you will, the day she discovered a poignant correlation between mental health disorders and geographical disparities in health care access. What could have been an opportunity to champion the underrepresented devolved into an exercise in protocol and publishable metrics. She waded through the sea of statistical significance, monitoring p-values like a hawk, yet each data point reminded her of the lives entangled in those threads—lives confined to symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment pathways that did little to capture their humanity. As professor emerita at the University of Washington, Paula's legacy is not just built of charts and graphs; it's the silent conversations she never had, the patients whose stories she only glimpsed through data reports. In her pursuit to elucidate the intricacies of aging and health care, she became a ghostwriter of reality, penning the narratives of people who could never quite translate their palpable fears and hopes into the sterile language of biostatistics. The world sings praises for Paula's contributions, but within it dances a tragic dissonance. She arched her back against the weight of a system that demands clarity and precision while obscuring the chaotic brilliance of human experience. Her work illuminated the gaps within health care but simultaneously highlighted the impossibility of capturing the entirety of a life within a dataset. In the realm of numbers, every statistic seemingly mocks the very essence of existence, reducing vibrant, dynamic lives to passing mentions in journal articles and conference presentations. In the end, Paula K. Hagedorn Diehr reminds us of the great paradox of the numbers-obsessed world: as we strive for precision and clarity, we risk losing the soul embedded in each data point. Her legacy lies not solely in quantifying health systems but in challenging the veracity of a world that values numbers over narratives. In this delicate dance between counting lives and truly understanding them, Paula may have realized the tragic truth: in a society enamored by statistics, the most profound stories often go untold. Thus, we count, and in doing so, we mourn—counting lives, while the lives themselves elude our grasp.