My grandfather died today at the age of 86, from natural causes. He was afflicted by the Alzheimer disease.
Born in 1923, he had a well-filled life. He made studies of philosophy in France, during the WWII, under the Nazi occupation. That wasn't something easy. After the war, he was tax controller.
He will have seen the best and the worse of the technological progress of mankind during the XXth century. The progressive role of the automobiles as an usual transportation tool, the fantastic adventure of aeronautics, from the first commercial airlines to Apollo and that day of July 1969, the Concorde and the Space Shuttle, but also the scary progress in weaponry, from the machinegun to the thermonuclear warheads. The medical progress, that allowed the population of Earth to boom in 80 years. The political progresses, though slower than others, also made their way, death sentence was abolished in France (1981) and in other countries. The end of Appartheid in South Africa, Gandhi's movement in India, Martin Luther King, and those people that changed the face of the world. He witnessed all that.
He was catholic, but I think he lost a part of his faith during the WWII, as a lot of intellectuals.
May him Rest in Peace.