Some people seem to think the measure of your life is determined by how many people show up to your funeral, but I think that in a lot of ways, that's just a matter of timing.  Depending on where you are in life you're likely to have more or less people show up, and I think the older you get, it's likelier you won't have as many attendees unless you're famous or have produced a huge amount of descendants who actually like you.

If I had croaked when I was still a kid I probably would have had classmates from school show up.  At that point the tragedy would also kind of revolve more around your parents, so a lot of their friends and associates and  family would have probably shown up.  All in all attendance probably would have been halfway decent.

I was probably at the peak number of my own friends who I saw and interacted with regularly sometime around college.  If I'd been unfortunate enough to kick the bucket then I probably could have counted on a pretty large turnout.  Not to mention family and even professors and whatnot.  I think this is when I would have had the biggest attendance, but since I've continued on quite a ways past that, I can't say it serves as a full measure of my life.

By the time I got into my 30's my social life had taken a pretty big plummet.  Most of the friends I had in college now live in other states or countries and to a large degree I've lost contact with a lot of them.  Being Facebook friends definitely isn't the same and I wouldn't expect one to travel a long distance to attend a funeral at this point.  Even a lot of the friends I had who still lived nearby started getting married and having kids and as a result I saw much less of them.  People get busy with jobs and families and their own lives and just hanging out sort of goes out the window.  And then I've unfortunately had to cut a couple of friends out of my life for some pretty toxic behavior.  Your mileage may vary, but at this point in my life I'd probably have a pretty small base of attendees.  Some people are much better than I am at maintaining social ties with their old friends.  Some people have coworkers they hang out with, and some people have large families, so all of those factors will come into play.  Maybe the social plummet doesn't happen for everyone to the degree it happened to me, but by and large I'd bet it happens to a certain extent to pretty much everyone.  I have no doubt a funeral for me now would definitely be significantly less attended than when I was younger.  I don't know, maybe it is a measure of your life and I've dropped the ball in some way.  But it feels like sort of a natural progression.

And then, of course, if you manage to make it until you're really old you run the risk of outliving all your friends and possibly your family, too.  You could be the most wonderful person on the planet with thousands of friends, but if they're all gone they're not going to be able to show up for your funeral.  It's something to think about.  You might want to kick the bucket before your friends do.