Sorry if this topic is a bit heavy, but have you ever stopped to ponder your own mortality?

Although the years are certainly speeding by rather quickly these days, I do not yet consider myself to be old.... not yet anyway.... but so many of my friends and colleagues are dying around me.

My parents both died young but my elderly relatives are dying now, and the parents of my close friends are dying now..... I expected that.

What I didn't expect are the (what I think are) large numbers of colleagues and friends my own age who have passed recently.

Since I left work 4 years ago 11 people who were close to me have passed away. All in four years! They were my brother, 5 work colleagues, 2 close friends, 2 BFF's mothers and an aunt. My girlfriend's mothers and my aunt were in their 80's so I can handle that, but the other 8 were all aged from mid 50's to mid 60's. That is not old!

Last month 3 people who had been close to me died within 4 days of each other and this week there have been another 2. I feel that I'm rather overcome with mourning .... mourning them all at once..... and I'm not sure if I'm thinking more about my own death than one would normally do in the same circumstances, but I am thinking about it and I do feel sad.

I thought I read somewhere that we were an aging population.