How soon is too soon?

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Mendalla

Mendalla

Happy headbanging ape!!
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We've lost a number of important figures in arts and entertainment this year at a variety of ages. Examples: Prince was 57, Carrie Fisher was 60, David Bowie and Greg Lake were 69, Leonard Cohen was 82, Debbie Reynolds was 84, and Richard Adams was 96.

For some we say "it was too soon" and others "they lived to a good age". But how do we decide? I mean, Cohen was still productive into his eighties so was that too soon or a good age?

I don't think there's much doubt that Christina Grimmie was "too soon" give that she was murdered, was only 22, and the quality of the material that's come out since her death suggests she had a bright future ahead of her. Similarly, I don't think anyone would dispute that Richard Adams had a full, productive life, dying naturally at 96 with some popular classics of 20th century literature under his belt. But is "too soon" a product of age or more a matter of how much they still have ahead of them?

I don't really have an answer and I suppose it is subjective to some degree. Thoughts, WC2?
 
The Bible says three score and ten - perhaps based on the observation that people who had adequate food, shelter, and the means to meet their needs might live active productive lives for that long, and a few might reach 80. The majority died much younger - before their time.

I've heard that when Old Age Security was introduced in Canada, only a few were expected to live long enough to collect it. Many people did hard, dangerous, physical labour, women died in childbirth (as did babies), medical care was often unavailable - life expectancy was often less than 65.

Also, without modern medicine, people who became feeble, immobile, unable to walk, or to feed themselves didn't live in nursing homes (sometimes for years) once their productive lives were over. No wonderdrugs for pneunomia - no feeding tubes for ALS or MS, no antibiotics for bed sores. Grandma got sick and died in her 60s, provided she had survived bearing 12 children, raising the 8 that survived infancy and all the hazards of living on a farm without electricity, central heating, modern plumbing.

Now we have people in their 90s who live in their own homes, volunteer at soup kitchens or nursing homes, bowl and/or dance, write books, preach sermons ... And others who are tired and willing to go at 65 or so. At 76 I consider that I have lived a full and meaningful life; I know that despite my physical problems I 'make a difference', and I hope to enjoy life for a few more years. Maybe I'll see 80 or so - most likely not 90 - nor do I want to as I continue to lose my abilities.

Unfortunately, there is still a difference in life expentancy for the poor. Many of the people who depend upon shelters, soup kitchens, and churches are old at 50 - 55 - or so.
 
I think a big aspect of it is how they outwardly appear to others. If they seem active and healthy one might think 'too soon' not realizing the person's actual age.
 
Someone on the radio today referred to 2016 as the 'year of dying too young'...

If the biblical standard is three score and ten, then Jesus died too young. Had he lived longer the Jesus movement might have looked more like Buddhism. Of course, had he lived longer he may have developed rough edges and cynicism.
 
I remember an older relative of a cousin of mine, wailing / railing against god .....why do you let me leave and take "P". Take me. Take me.

I have a close family member who is afraid to die. For this reason, though he will say he wants to die (at times), will always seek assistance for any health ailment. A different family member was quite comfortable with dying, having lived a good life and was tired of an illness.

So, when is the right time?
Does it make a difference on what a person is offering? Is a gifted person's length of life more valuable than an average everyday person?
 
We have a fairly short life span. In 100 years, none of us living now will be here. Strange to contemplate non existence.
 
crazyheart said:
Many that you named, I think would have lived longer if they lived a different life style.
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And yet many die young and have taken care of themselves all their lives. And others do everything "wrong" and live to a ripe old age.
 
My nephew died in his forties - brain anurism.
People thought to comfort my sister by saying things like ''he was too young to die", "he was taken too soon."
She told me that she reached the point when she wanted to scream at them "How do you know?" He may have died at exactly the right time for him. He married young, and his children were almost grown when he left them. He choose work over university, and worked his way up from stocking shelves to inventory control to management. He apparently lived a full life in those 40 some years.
40 years of productive life, or perhaps 80 years with the last 10 lying in a nursing home bed. (Maybe I should be in the 'would you rather' thread.
 
From folks I've known through the years my thought would be anything before the mid 80's is too soon. Have known a couple of folks who made it into their late 90's and for sure it was time when they left. And agree with Waterfall about it not being all lifestyle. Just look at a guy like George Burns who lived to 100 and smoked several cigars a day and was not a jogger. And then look at a famous jogger like Jim Fixx who wrote books on running and living healthy and he passed away at age 52 from a heart attack. I try to find some fun in each day because...you just never know. ;)
 
You just never know said:
From folks I've known through the years my thought would be anything before the mid 80's is too soon. Have known a couple of folks who made it into their late 90's and for sure it was time when they left. And agree with Waterfall about it not being all lifestyle. Just look at a guy like George Burns who lived to 100 and smoked several cigars a day and was not a jogger. And then look at a famous jogger like Jim Fixx who wrote books on running and living healthy and he passed away at age 52 from a heart attack. I try to find some fun in each day because...you just never know. ;)
Click to expand...

Thus the Shadow ... Thomas' existence goes on ... perhaps as an envelope for a fold in which to recess de Light 've Christ! Sometimes a mire word can ignite the funniest exchanges ... satyrs?
 
This has always been a puzzling issue for me. Who DOES decide what is a good age to die?

One of my cousins died in an accident at 21 when I was 12. All my grandparents were gone by then too - one in WW1, one in her 40's, one in the 50's and one in their 60's. That seemed to set the stage for 'early deaths' for my family. Cousins died, relatively young, all my aunts and uncles, most under 70. My dad was 64. My brother lived until 65. My sister until 66. A nephew died more recently at 50. My mother lived the longest, dying at 80, which really isn't old compared to many others.

From observations this topic doesn't seem very logical - as has been pointed out, some live healthy lives and die young, others live what we've been told are unhealthy lives and live to a great age. Personally, I would rather die young than hang around in pain for years. Ideally though I'd like to be healthy, alert, self sufficient, capable of enjoying life until close to a hundred. (That ain't gonna happen!)
 
Death is a quantum dimension ... for the life of me you don't know what will pop out of the anti/ante quantum states. Then if encountering a love to die for in short order (limited) some understanding of crisis and critical states is observed from only the other side of that chance state ...

Word may be the counterpoint to the bust out ...
 
Mendalla said:
We've lost a number of important figures in arts and entertainment this year at a variety of ages. Examples: Prince was 57, Carrie Fisher was 60, David Bowie and Greg Lake were 69, Leonard Cohen was 82, Debbie Reynolds was 84, and Richard Adams was 96.

For some we say "it was too soon" and others "they lived to a good age". But how do we decide? I mean, Cohen was still productive into his eighties so was that too soon or a good age?

I don't think there's much doubt that Christina Grimmie was "too soon" give that she was murdered, was only 22, and the quality of the material that's come out since her death suggests she had a bright future ahead of her. Similarly, I don't think anyone would dispute that Richard Adams had a full, productive life, dying naturally at 96 with some popular classics of 20th century literature under his belt. But is "too soon" a product of age or more a matter of how much they still have ahead of them?

I don't really have an answer and I suppose it is subjective to some degree. Thoughts, WC2?
Click to expand...

"Too soon" is a function of "readiness to leave". Wll death be viewed as a completion in the circumstances or a cruel trick of fate? Here is a story about someone who if she had died at 84 would have been deemed to have gone too soon.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.the.../carmen-herrera-men-controlled-everything-art
 
When we say they have gone 'too soon', I think it means we weren't ready to see them go. I know that's how I felt when Leonard Cohen died. At my church, we are an aging congregation, and right now there are a few of the regulars who are in the hospital, or in the hospice. I'm afraid we will be saying a few good-byes this year. It's part of the boomer phenomenon, I think.
 
When the pain of life becomes entirely sufficient ... can one see their way out of this integral to connect with the other side of that thin bloody line separating genius from insanity.

Does life appear sane to you as you look at small communities gathering up all the physical resources?

Can you imagine what good you could do with near $200MM a year and expectations of increases next season? Alternatively can you imagine what damage that position could do to the paradigm ... the normal existence?
 
Tis may be a fuzzy, hairy, or wholly existence for those clouded with banks of paper monis flying around ...

An abstract sign from the underground subtleties of life!
 
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