old age and death are inconvenient

It is frustrating when the only persons who have first-hand knowledge of historical events are either advanced in years or dead.  Because few of us expect to be remembered, we do little or nothing to document what we have done in this world.  Thus the researcher is forced to search for scraps of information, never intended to be preserved for posterity, but which by some odd chance have escaped destruction or decay.  We leave little traces of ourselves here and there, most frequently glimpses that other people have had of us, and of which they kept records -- seldom because they wished to celebrate us, but merely because it was part of their job description to keep half an eye on us. 

I am shocked to realize that the events I am attempting to illuminate happened nearly half a century ago.  I was alive then -already ten years old. Yet almost everything I want to know I cannot learn, because those who once knew have passed away, no longer remember, or were never interested in the first place.

All things must pass.  But I don't have to like it.