Approximately 4 billion people have died during our lifetime Because the depression discouraged the raising of large families, the current SeventySomething crop came out of the 1930s as one of the smallest generations in American history. Then we encountered some of the most massive death episodes in world history. It has been estimated that about 4 billion people around the world died between the time the current SeventySomethings were born and the time they reached 70 years of age.  That's almost equivalent to the entire population of the world today.  You'd think that incomprehensible number of deaths, along with the well-know inevitability of death, would have hardened us to the loss of life.  However, we're still thrown into various degrees of stress when someone we know, or even know of, dies. Even the death of a tabloid celebrity seriously upsets many people. This generation alone has lost millons of members to The Great Depression, wars and their lingering complexities, smoking, cancer, drugs, AIDs, obesity, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, polio, circulatory and respiratory disorders, terrorists, snipers, serial killers and gangsters, ship wrecks, airline crashes, diabetes and traffic accidents. Prior to the completion of the Interstate system, we averaged about 50,000 deaths per year and accepted those numbers almost routinely, oblivious to the fact that the annual numbers even exceeded our total deaths in Korea and Vietnam. At the dedication of the D-Day Museum  at New Orleans in 2001, we were told that 1,000 World War II veterans were dying every day. Although medical advances are prolonging lives significantly, a glance at the daily newspaper obits indicates that today's SeventySomethings may be experiencing close to the same losses. We are, indeed, in the twilight of our generation, perhaps an appropriate time to take stock of where we've been, where we're going, what we're facing and what we're still capable of achieving and enjoying, individually and as a group.. We have watched how our predecessors fared in these final years. Maybe we can learn from their experiences and generate a better last hurrah. There is light even in twilight, ready to be used before evening sets in. Copyright 2005 by Carroll P. Trosclair  For more information on senior citizens, see ElderlyPlace.Net Advertisements Approximately 4 billion people have died during our lifetime Because the depression discouraged the raising of large families, the current SeventySomething crop came out of the 1930s as one of the smallest generations in American history. Then we encountered some of the most massive death episodes in world history. It has been estimated that about 4 billion people around the world died between the time the current SeventySomethings were born and the time they reached 70 years of age.  That's almost equivalent to the entire population of the world today.  You'd think that incomprehensible number of deaths, along with the well-know inevitability of death, would have hardened us to the loss of life.  However, we're still thrown into various degrees of stress when someone we know, or even know of, dies. Even the death of a tabloid celebrity seriously upsets many people. This generation alone has lost millons of members to The Great Depression, wars and their lingering complexities, smoking, cancer, drugs, AIDs, obesity, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, polio, circulatory and respiratory disorders, terrorists, snipers, serial killers and gangsters, ship wrecks, airline crashes, diabetes and traffic accidents. Prior to the completion of the Interstate system, we averaged about 50,000 deaths per year and accepted those numbers almost routinely, oblivious to the fact that the annual numbers even exceeded our total deaths in Korea and Vietnam. At the dedication of the D-Day Museum  at New Orleans in 2001, we were told that 1,000 World War II veterans were dying every day. Although medical advances are prolonging lives significantly, a glance at the daily newspaper obits indicates that today's SeventySomethings may be experiencing close to the same losses. We are, indeed, in the twilight of our generation, perhaps an appropriate time to take stock of where we've been, where we're going, what we're facing and what we're still capable of achieving and enjoying, individually and as a group.. We have watched how our predecessors fared in these final years. Maybe we can learn from their experiences and generate a better last hurrah. There is light even in twilight, ready to be used before evening sets in. Copyright 2005 by Carroll P. Trosclair