I was born in 1964, so, I was 10 when the buildup to 1975 was happening (and watched the subsequent failure of that).
Then, when I was a teenager, I got to see the fallour of the big Apostacy events in the 1980s.
During all of this, I was told by my parents and by people of my parents' peer group that "this old system won't last much longer, and won't the New System be great!"
It is now 2024. I am going to be 60 years old in a few months. 60. Six-Zero. Over half a century.
My mom died two months after her 80th birthday last year, after suffering for years of chronic poor health (some of it brought on by a very sedentary lifestyle, but also plagued by emotional and mental issues and family drama which did not help overall.) And yes, I wept. I wept because there was unfinished business between her and I, things I wish I had told her.
If I live to 80, that means that I have just about 20 years left in me. That's a very sobering thought, considering how fast the past 20 years flew by.
So, I have a lot of peers that I grew up with, with parents in the same age group as mine. And they are watching in confusion and pain as, one by one, these parents are dying off.
The refrain I keep hearing is "this wasn't supposed to be like this; this wasn't supposed to happen!", also followed by the realizaiton that "we" are now becoming the "elderly ones", and that clock is ticking hard.
Back in 1995, (when I was 40), thanks to the early days of the internet, I finally realized that this whole thing was bogus, and I made the decision I was no longer going to wait for a bus that was never going to arrive. So, heartless as it sounds, my mom's death, while sad, did not "shake me to the core" as it did my sister and my brother, who keep on believing.
In the space of 5 years, my wife has seen her aunt and her father pass, and with me, it's my mom and, last month, my aunt on my mom's side.
It's only going to "accelerate", because, much as we would like, no one lives forever. Once you make peace with that, it's a little less (a little less) traumatic when parents pass away. But, if you are still in wide-eyed belief that "This system just CAN'T last much longer" (the sister who told me that died within five years of that statement, and its been 7 years since her death, no new system yet...), unprepared mentally for this eventuality, then I am sure the wave of deaths that are coming is going to be a real shock to deal with.
Also, the amount of unpreparedness, with both financial and legal documents, just amazes me. My mom was better prepared than most, but there was still a lot of expensive headaches in settling her estate. In the case of my father in Law (who was not a Witness), he left a big mess that my wife's family had to straighten out, and my mother-in-law, True-Believer to the core who cared not one whit about "worldly things" like finances, got a real education in such things after her husband died. After my mom's passing, I finally got off my arse and got wills and a trust set up for me and my wife, because I don't want my kids do deal with the same crap I had to. I have been on my Dad about this as well, but, his attitude is "que sera, sera", which means I am going to have to step up for the funeral expenses when he passes. And even the "cheapest" burial is amazingly expensive where I liive. I can only imagine what other JW families must go through when this happens, since so many of them did not really put aside much for retirement or for death.
Anyway, another funeral tomorrow for the father of someone from my peer group, and she just lost her husband (younger than me!) due to a massive heart attack. I am sure she is just reeling by now (another pioneer wife/super-elder husband power couple. Still didn't provide immunity...).
Anyway, it's been a wild ride these past few years. And it's only beginning...