I’m 71, I’ve read several of the answers here and certainly sympathize, and I’ve known seniors living with various trials and burdens in their old age.
But so far, knock on wood, I don’t consider myself one of them. That could certainly change. I fell down 8 concrete steps 7 months ago and was amazed that I was uninjured, but in any case, I’m whole and healthy.
People in old age struggle with the deaths of friends and family, chronic pain, deteriorating mobility, reduced income, loss of independence, fading memory, and the like. Some endure daily living conditions that are truly heartbreaking. Again, these conditions deserve our sympathy and support.
I’m overweight, out of shape, living alone, with nearest family hundreds of miles away, still needing to work to keep up my finances, unemployed at the moment, dependent for job prospects on recruiters from foreign lands who neither speak nor understand English, not always on the best of terms with my kids, finding that I sometimes have to think several minutes to remember things that were once at my fingertips, and forced to admit that if a young hottie knocked on my door wanting to spend the night, I couldn’t really gratify her as I could have years ago.
Having said that, I am content with my life.
I lie down by myself at night, but I have my dignity and my peace of mind. But for a regular call of nature during the night, I sleep quite well. I live in an apartment with 10-foot ceilings, plenty of natural light, and space for my thousand books. It is on the third floor, with no elevator, and despite last year’s freak accident on the stairs, I regularly mount the 38 steps from the ground floor to my breezeway with no problem. I walk for fitness, to get in better shape and lose weight. I am learning Greek from an online app. I record a daily audio every morning for my granddaughter in Europe, reading her a story or singing her a song, and transmit it to my daughter-in-law via WhatsApp. I eat healthily, a high-fiber diet, keeping almost no sweets in the house and ordering in pizza only perhaps twice a year. This evening, I will have a grilled salmon filet for my supper, washed down with a glass of wine. I am keeping my mind active. I am reading through the works of Lord Macaulay and will finish volume 5 of his History of England tomorrow night. After that, I plan to start Gilbert Highet’s The Classical Tradition.
I love Renaissance and Baroque music, but my apartment is mostly silent, which is the way I want it. No noise from other apartments or the nearby highway. I have a 65″ TV, but it is usually turned on just once, late in the evening, when I watch 50 minutes of something interesting from Netflix, Prime Video, and so forth.
I am comfortable in my atheism and do not secretly tremble at the thought of eternal torment. I suppose such a thing could actually happen, contrary to all reason, but it would be a moral travesty if it did.
I have been very careful during the pandemic, and as far as I know, I have not had COVID. I personally know people much younger than I who contracted it even though fully vaccinated. They recovered, but I am sorry for that they endured.
Of course I can perfectly well imagine the possibility of a condition, 10 or 15 years from now, where I was unable to live alone, perhaps afflicted by dementia, suffering chronic pain, unable to afford my own care and having to impose on family, and so forth. I hope that never happens, and if it seems about to happen, I would hope to have the strength to end things my own way.
The only significant change that I might consider making in my life, if I were fully retired, might be to adopt a Boston Terrier from a rescue. I love dogs, though I haven’t owned one for years.
It’s funny that, thinking about this question, I suddenly remembered reading an article, perhaps when I was in high school, about some old man, perhaps the age I am now, who was without family, in slender circumstances, living alone, perhaps above a storefront or something, and I thought even back then, “I suspect something like that may happen to me.” I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. And now, something like that is here, though my circumstances are better than his. But it is what it is. I do not go through the day bemoaning my fate. With my books and my own thoughts to keep me company, I consider myself as well off, if not in a better condition, than some people who have more resources than I.
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