My son was trying to describe a film to me the other day. However, hard he tried I couldn't work out what it was, eventually he resorted to
"Its an old film - from the Seventies."
And I had that strange sense that time was different for both of us, the Seventies being Ancient History to him and for me it can sometimes feel as if it is only just out of reach.
But of course the Seventies to him would have been the Thirties to me and my God that did feel like Ancient History to me as a kid. A time before the defining moment of my generation the Second World War, It conjured up black and white images of cloth capped men marching from Jarrow and austerity.
I sometimes feel that the past exists somewhere and if I tried hard enough I could get there, as if we each have a series of personal theme parks.
"Welcome to Oxted 1978. You will find your first girlfriend still waiting outside the cinema for you."
But of course the past doesn't have any reality anymore and time pushes on unsentimentally leaving us very little time in the sun, how quickly we flower and how quickly that is taken from us and however hard we try we cannot reverse its march by even a second.
And now I notice that it is my generation that is starting to be taken and the rate at which they are taken becomes faster and faster. People like Joe Strummer and Tony Wilson, so associated with my youth. How can they have become old, How can they have died? I look at their ages and subtract mine and am left with just two sets of fingers.
And if I listen carefully I can hear the thunder of the waterfall, now not so far away, and that is the waterfall that will take me too.
So what have I done with my time?
I used to say that at least I had been a good father,
And now ....
rippled_water
a) don't underestimate how bad some parents are, I've no doubt your kids will be fine
b) yeah, people die, can't stop it. that's it, done, over, used, written.
even though you're not far behind in age of the stars you mentioned, that's no reason to think of approaching death other than in the way we should all expect it, to be inevitable. Some people live long, other people who seem to die before their time.