Or am I just so old now that I know more of them...?
Just in the last thirty days "we" lost:
Nora Ephron, Andy Griffith, Ernest Borgnine, Sally Ride, Chad Everett, Sherman Hemlsey, Gore Vidal, Marvin Hamlisch, Helen Gurley Brown, Ron Palillo, Phyllis Diller, Jerry Nelson, and Neil Armstrong.
Doesn't that seem like a lot?
But I'm sure that the list of "who's alive and who's dead" is pretty stable over any given twelve-month period. So the real difference is me. In my twenties I was going to lots of weddings. Now, it's funerals. And the figures who loomed so important in my younger days are reaching the end of their road, and I have to accept it.
I remember that in the same month in 2002, Billy Wilder and Chuck Jones died. Billy was 95. Chuck was 89. okay, not a bad run. But when I think of how many movies these two men made that formed my personality, it was devastating. Of the people on the above list, six were past 80. Three were in their 70's. The rest in their 60's. A generation or two older than I am, but now I'm old enough to be aware of my own mortality even as I see through their work they have achieved a kind of immorality. (For Pete's sake, Armstrong is one of only twelve humans ever to walk on the moon!)
Think about this: there are only two living Beatles AND only two living Sweathogs.
All that's left from Mayberry are Opie and Gomer Pyle.
And who's going to teach us how to count?
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