'Dying too young', or 'not having lived long enough'

Jerry Doyle, who played "Michael Garibaldi" in Babylon 5, died recently.

People often write of famous (and non-famous) people who have recently passed away, that they died too young.

It's all relative.

60 is not too young; half a century ago, it was the average lifespan for many people in the industrialised world. Since occurence of such a lifespan still falls within living memory, then it's not too surprising.

For me, anything less than sixty would elicit a 'shucks, they might have done more great things', and that 'they died [well] before their time'. — When they died, Philip Seymour Hoffman was 46, Prince was 57, Whitney Houston was 48, and her daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown was just 22. The people who were killed at the Orlando shooting were also too young.

The feels are different wrt people over 60 who have continued to be creative. Robin Williams was 63, and it feels to me, like he died too young. David Bowie was 69.

With loved ones who are old, we don't think of them anymore as having died too young, but that they haven't lived long enough. With us.

24.04.2023 Update: More people have died before their time than ever before. Before 2022, many succumbed to the coronavirus, starting with the year 2020. Many of the pandemic-related losses in life were of health causes that could have been delayed, had COVID-19 not introduced its own massive delays in the healthcare systems of all the countries.

Before 2020, most of the people who'd passed away, were usually old, so the death of a much younger person always so untimely.

On the year of the original publication of this post, two major personalities died: George Michael on 25. and Carrie Fisher on 27. december. Not a lot of time had passed, when Chester Bennington died the next year, on 20.07.2017. Aaron Carter on 5 November 2022. They were all too young to die.

Alos, a lovely thank you to the commenter below.