Sometimes you have to take a good long run at the thing and kick it to the ground. I did. I gathered some thoughts I'd had on aging and what a total crock our perceptions of aging are, it being a 7 billion dollar a year industry to convince us to buy everything from anti-aging creams to sexual dysfunction products as we are falling apart at the seams doncha know and ewww so disgusting with our incontinence and bad teeth and saggy boobs and varicosey everything elses.
Re-pul-sive us olders are I tell ya.
NOT.
So I exploded a few myths, read some of 98 year old "Dad's Tomato Garden", and put the thing to bed. On time.
And FACT. Did you know that MOST(80%)seniors go directly from independent living to the grave?
See what bullshit crocks of brainwashing we've had?
Good for you. I want to go out like a late friend of mine. She folded her clothes each night and put her shoes together neatly in a pair in case somebody had to find her cold one morning! She lived independently in her own home until she was 98.
ReplyDeleteMy great grandmother, GM, was the same age as your friend when she fell down the stairs in her own house and broke her neck.
ReplyDeleteYay Nanny!
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And FACT. Did you know that MOST(80%)seniors go directly from independent living to the grave?
ReplyDeleteI want to be one of the 80%. Thanks for giving me hope.
Me too, Marcia but in the meantime I might visit some senior residences and help out the old people a bit.
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I spent a few hours today with an old friend who turned 90 last month. Talk about someone who is at peace with herself and her world. (She also looks like she's about 65 or so. Her sister is 96!)
ReplyDeleteVP:
ReplyDeleteI had a few aunts like that and the stuff I learned from them!
Your story reminded me of two that would meet for lunch once a month at a very fancy hotel (and travel a ways to do so) while still in their nineties.
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That's the way I like to hear it and the way I'm approaching old age as a tough old broad who will wildly keep on ticking till the end.
ReplyDeleteThere's still too much assumption that oldies inevitably fall to bits and need looking after. As people have said, you can still be independent and compos mentis at a very advanced age. A lot of old-age frailty is simply the result of not doing enough and thinking enough and keeping everything ticking over.
ReplyDelete@Nora:
ReplyDeleteI think the secret is to remain curious about all that life has to offer and engage in passionate living, forgoing the TV set at all costs.
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@Nick
ReplyDeleteAmen to that! It is so very important to be enthusiastic!
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Of course, who ever would want to have to be taken care of if they could take care of themselves. But not everyone is so lucky. There is that other 20%. Both of my grandmothers, my mother and my father were in that 20%. I was able to bring my mother home to die after she became confined to a wheelchair. It is so important to make the places that our elderly are sometimes confined to better. At present they are mostly pretty terrible. Even when they are physically comfortable they are deadly boring.
ReplyDelete20CW:
ReplyDeleteOh that 20% who suffer and are frightened and abused. I am writing a play about that very issue. My doc was telling me some subleties of abuse, stuff we can't imagine, like taking away privileges.
I had a dear old friend who was tossed into an awful ward by her daughters. 92. she turned her face to the wall for 4 months and then died. I still get crazy upset thinking about it.
Our greatest fear.
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