Inspired by the passing of Colin Powell, it made me think about how it seems like whenever a famous person dies, you generally hear “Ah, they were no age” if they were “young” or “Well, they had a good innings” if they were “old”. These two sentiments don’t overlap, so somewhere in the middle must be an age or range of ages where death is an appropriate and accepted outcome.
What is that age?
I’m trying not to make this topic either too morbid or too tasteless but ymmv
I only realised last year (as a result of toxic debates around COVID and life expectancy) that what we often think about as being the life expectancy (~72) is only the life expectancy of somebody at the point they’re born. The life expectancy of a 71yo is obviously not just one more year year but I’d never really thought about it until then.
So according to this life expectancy table I found at the top of google, every death is too soon…if somebody passed on their 119th birthday you could say “ahh, such a shame, they still had a good 7.5 months left in them!”