As I see it, my friends and I, and perhaps those who look up to us and our generation’s heroes, have hit an age range where apparently-sudden deaths are starting to be “us,” for various reasons. We’re not ready to admit or acknowledge that we’re getting older — because we still look and feel young (and because we are still comparatively young) — or that those we looked up to while we were growing up, who were actually not that much older than us though they seemed so at the time, have been hitting trickier years that are not so very far future for ourselves anymore. We’ve seen many celebrities die during the course of our lifetimes, but for the most part those people either died too young (think River Phoenix) or were chiefly of a prior generation (think Gene Kelly) and it didn’t hit home in the same way as this year’s limelight deaths, which feel much more intimate. So when people blame the year 2016, they’re really just saying, “I’m not ready for me and mine to be old yet. 2016, you are a crossroads and I don’t like it. Not one bit.”