I can remember people who died in the second half of the twentieth century who were alive in the nineteenth century. My parents were both born around a hundred years ago - my mother turned 40 when I was two months old. This means that all my grandparents were alive in the 1900s. I clearly remember both my grandfathers, and their deaths, and many elderly aunts who passed away. One memory that has stayed with me is visiting an uncle of my father's and he was recalling something that happened when he was a child. I suddenly realized that he was describing something that happened in the nineteenth century. Now it is the 'next' century, and my memory can cover three different centuries. How amazing is that.
We used to live next to an older lady who lived until she was 99... She used to tell us stories about growing up in Los Angeles and going down to get her mail by horse and buggy! She took a train every three years from California to Michigan to visit her daughter - who was in her 70's! She was an amazing person, who took computer lessons in her late 80's and thought technology was amazing... I took her for rides in my car and she loved the way I could just talk to my GPS and the car would show me how to get places. She's the kind of person I want to be when I become older. She lived in her own in her house until she was 98... Of course we helped a bit by bringing her meals every night... If you're cooking for two, it's just as easy to cook for three!
Well, I knew qute a few people who died in the last century. Some were friends that my family made along the way. Some were friends that I made while working. Then there were the family members, the aunts and uncles some I did know, but others I didn't because my parents moved out of their home state before I was born. My granparents, although I had only gotten a chance to know my grandmother on my father's side because she came to visit us once. However, of all the deaths that occured in the last century of people I knew the hardest was my father. The irony he died in 1999, which was the final year of the last century, as if he had no intention of going into the 21st century.
My grandfather was born in the late 19th century as I can conclude by the naturalization papers I found in the family chest, but although I have always have a special bond with him, I never knew him. He was assassinated four months before I was born, being his most cherished dream to have me in his arms being his first grandchild. Later, my paternal grandmother, his wife, died when I was only 9, and she left a dream in the air; take me to Disneyland when I would turn 15, a dream never coming true to date, as I have never been to Disneyland. About to turning 18, I had a unclear premonitory dream that made me ask my maternal grandmother to stay with us for a few more days. She was visiting and all my pleas were vain, and she left only to die in car crash the next day, and I couldn't recover from this impression for long, long years, feeling that I could avoid it, but she didn't listen to me. Ten years later, an aunt that I thought to hate passed away and while I felt happy at first, I went to the church and pray to forgive her and forgive myself for having felt that way. And while for @Hannah Davis 1999 marked the death of his father, this was the same year in which my own suffered a stroke that was the beginning of the end, although he survived ten more years. He passed away in this century, 2009, but has been the hardest for me among all of those deaths in my family records