Has anyone else noticed

that, in your own experience, within the last year or so, there has been an unusually high number of people -- the unusually decent, honorable, generous and kind people -- who have died, and died what would otherwise be considered untimely deaths?

This has happened to me with unusual frequency this past year or so, and stands out because each time it happens, you say to yourself something along the lines of "Wow - that's a person who will really be missed and if life were 'fair', they should have lived to be a hundred." This has happened to me a half dozen or more times in the past year, and they were all people in otherwise seemingly good health, and the deaths occurred from a variety of causes. I told a good friend who I trust about this experience, and she agreed with me, i.e., that she had been experiencing the same thing (and it wasn't the same people, as you might suspect, as we are friends and do have friends in common).

It's almost as though some unseen hand were snatching all the truly kind, decent, honorable people away, for some unknown reason.

Comments?

as if those souls don;t want to stick around and go through the times to come.

FWIW and for a representative sampling, I have not experienced or noticed the phenomenon.

I have tend to reject such a hypothesis as being both facile and just plain wrong inasmuch as none of these people were (at least in this particular incarnation) the sort of individuals who were in any way likely to cut-and-run to avoid being in the way when the merde hits the ventilateur, as it were. Just the opposite, in fact. Just so we're clear, these are (were) people from among that set of truly extraordinary individuals for whom not being involved was simply not an option when they saw a problem, injustice or cruelty that their involvement could either prevent, cure or otherwise ameliorate. In short, ducking out to avoid a coming shitstorm would have been particularly uncharacteristic of these individuals (at least, once again, in their most recent incarnation).

I wouldn't have even thought to bring it up, but for the facts that (a) it's been happening with such alarming frequency, at least in my personal experience; (b) my friend has confirmed that the same thing has been happening to a number of her other, unrelated friends and acquaintances; and (c) having all these people suddenly and nearly simultaneously removed from my own personal circle of friends and acquaintances is, to say the least, not fun. One cannot help but wonder what in the dickens is happening.

Yeah, I know. Only the good die young. And Ronald Reagan gets to live to be ninety-something. Small consolation, to say the least.

I would like to think that some of these people were into helping and not just avoiding unpleasantness.

I wonder if this is REALLY the rapture - where all the truly good hearted get taken up before all hell breaks loose and the phony, so-called "Christians" who keep going on about it are the ones who will be "left behind."

And look at how long the genuinely evil seem to live - Poppy Bush, Dick Cheney, et al. People who have long outlived thier usefulness, yet continue to take up space on the planet.

SmirkyMonkey, if we go with what you propose, why are we still here? I look at myself as a truly good hearted, service-to-other person. You probably look at yourself the same way. If this is really the rapture, how come we've not been taken?

usher in the new age. I was kind of being tounge-in-cheek, but I sometimes wonder if these people - in addition to being good souls - have just fulfilled their purpose and were called before the turmoil hits the fan.

I guess nobody will know for sure until "IT" actually happens. :)

and their soul/spirit goals (whether they were or were not aware of them) were met and they went on to the other side because, face it... right now it's much easier to get results from the the other side than in this pea soup mess! :+

Then there are those of us whose soul purpose was to wait around and be here, as Smirkey stated, to help those when things got really bumpy. :+

I've not personally experienced this so much, but I have seen it throughout the world, moreorless.