There was a sort of

  what we visualized as a quilt being unsewn in places where the Greatest Generation was passing out of active duty as citizens-number-one. There were long pauses in filming movies because parents and loved ones were dying.  Sometimes the pauses were a person crying too hard at the passing of time to regain composure and work. Sometimes on sets there'd be people ready to act, but a chunk of set was missing or the person who'd been paying the assistant was having a life change.  Sometimes people who'd been in life roles of animosity and foil became friendly enough to (i)carry on(i). 

  Some pieces of quilt got stacked instead of unsewn.  Some whole families had gone into real estate or the law or law enforcement.  As particular families were changing, the American family was changing too. 

  For all the big moves that systems make, there were little people with knowledges and personalities, disciplines and passions, really making the world tick.  

  Some people with a penchant for studying everything took more of a witnessing-the-world stance during the critical years of the big aging phase.  Others spread keynote and tone, especially of kindness and compassion, like they were rambos.  And some pushed their own endurance to the max to drop everything in their own lives to not let the quilt come undone.  "On a mission" became a rallying cry for others to give both space and support.