He wasn’t yet 70 - that’s not old in today’s world...
Good point...he wasn’t that old...so let’s conjuncture something up! Moon beams? Hillary? Cow farts??
I was surprised to learn he was 68. To me, he looked like he was at least 80.
Well... that really depends on his lifestyle throughout his life. Not the last 4 or 5 years. All kinds of activities can take years off a lifespan such as smoking, drinking, doing street drugs, and even some pharmaceutical prescribed drugs. Stress is not handled equally by everyone and it sounds like he had gout and a failed knee replacement which could have gone septic in his body. In some of the pictures I've seen of him in the last 2 years; he looks really sickly.
Then again some people just die young. Athletic kids in high school, the military, and college drop dead from heart attacks and strokes. When our number is up; it's up I guess. God calls us all home eventually. Of course some, like this guy, may be going somewhere else but that's another story and not one we can verify.