The passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett has hit us near-baby boomers and full-on baby boomers with a rock and roll punch to the gut we weren't ready for.
We were the generation who was going to live forever, immortalized with youthful hip-ness, and mastered knowing how to be laid back while simultaneously running corporations.
We also coined the phrase "Never trust anyone over age thirty" while we will now do anything to look as young as 30.
But what do we do know?
Farrah Fawcett's death was hard enough to take. The wide-smiled blond icon of the 1970's graced the walls of every adolescent boy's room in the Western hemisphere, making us all feel sexy, and that youth and beauty was ours for the taking . . . forever.
But she passed away from cancer, was 62, and we were prepared, as much as we could be; although memories of her summery California looks and roles that ranged from a Charlie's bubbly angel to a beaten wife in the cult TV docudrama "The Burning Bed" are haunting me still.
A couple hours later, CNN sent another breaking news email. I had thought another plane may have crashed, a tsunami killed thousands in some third-world country, or another suicide bombing had left hundreds dead. Sadly, what else may be new?
But the one-line email reported that pop star Michael Jackson had been rushed to a hospital with cardiac arrest.
A stream of weird and panicked emotions flooded my body as I first reacted by manically calling friends, my father and some who didn't care.
Most of my thoughts then turned to how old he was--how could Michael Jackson die? How could the singer of "ABC" , "I'll Be There" and "Thriller" die?
After all, I brought down the house at my own prom and parties with dance moves to his songs, with "Rock With You" the first disco song I accepted, and again . . . wasn't he really, really young?
I tuned on the television and was hyped up and broken down at the same time. We all knew he had been in trouble for a long time. We knew he had a lot of mental and emotional issues, and watched him like some sort of sideshow freak as the news had portrayed him as 'Wacko Jacko' over the last few years.
But I didn't see him this way. The tabloids always take the worst and make up the most vile of stories out of untruths, in order, they think, to help us feel our own lives are somehow better than the kings and queens of celebrity-hood, and to make money above all.
When I thought of Jackson, I thought of the early 1980s when I was still a kid. I thought of his manic, genius, flawless dancing and moonwalk across the stage during award shows, and moves that even propelled the legendary Fred Astaire to compliment him on his grace, perfection and unique artistry.
I thought of my own youth, when I was energetic beyond words, rowdy, excited and without a care in the world except having fun and being careless because I could.
When Jackson was finally pronounced dead and the sound bites on cable news programs morphed into a long parade of surreal words and images that sobered me up, I knew it had to be drugs.
I was too young to remember the deaths of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Elvis Presley. My god, Presley was only 42 when he died.
I was too young to understand the significance of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.
But I'm not too young to understand the tragic death of Jackson, and this means were not merely all getting older, but more jaded as well.
My parents don't understand. They have been losing icons for twenty years. But Ed McMahon was 86, it was his time.
As I reflect back on my adolescence and childhood which now escapes me like some sort of weird, untouchable narrative, I am truly grieving.
This does not just mean my generation is truly feeling the ravages of age, loss and hard times that has even killed a young celebrity; it makes us feel we "somehow" have to close the door once and for all on the fantasy that we will are immortal and put our own childhoods, at least in most respects, laid to rest as well.
The later eighties and nineties went by in a flash, with most of us building careers and families, buying homes, cars and keeping up with the Joneses.
We are a generation that worked hard at being financially fulfilled at all costs, spent "quality time" with our own kids, something a lot of us didn't get with our own parents, and tried to keep that sweet adolescence of the 70's close to the hearth, as for some of us, these were the best time of our lives.
As millions of boomers have now traded in their daily joints for prescription drugs, we also feel for Michael, as no one has been untouched by drug addiction, either street drugs or prescription medication, either personally or by family members and friends.
We will all have our own way of grieving and celebrating.
As a child of the seventies who remembers The Partridge Family, corduroy bell bottoms, Camero's, Fat Albert, Soul Train and American Bandstand on Saturday mornings, and now the death of 50-year-old Jackson, I have made a conscious choice to celebrate how grateful I am to grow up during that era, rather than only mourn its loss.
But we must all seriously and honestly deal with this new epidemic of prescription drug abuse that has most likely contributed to Jackson's death, and has resulted in addictions and deaths in many forms and astronomical terms yet unforeseen for our generation and others.
According to recent statistics, from 2001 to 2005, more than 32,000 people died because of prescription drug overdoses, more than heroin and cocaine combined, with numbers for the past few years expected much higher, and with addiction growing highest among teens and baby boomers.
If there is anything to be gained, it is the hard lesson that we are all in danger of self medicating ourselves and self-destructing, and having that legacy be the one our children may remember most about us.
And that is a bitter pill none of should be willing to swallow.