You Know You Are Old When

[Oaktree]

The highest suicide rate based on age are folks age 85 and older. 22.39 per 100,000.

Old age, health, loneliness are (IMO) the causes. It’s not easy getting old.

A good friend of mine's father went out that way. He'd lost his wife (childhood sweetheart) a couple years earlier and was facing going into a nursing home, which he didn't want to do.
I understand his motives, my friend had a much harder time with it even though he and his father weren't especially close.

 

[Jstpssng]

A good friend of mine's father went out that way. He'd lost his wife (childhood sweetheart) a couple years earlier and was facing going into a nursing home, which he didn't want to do.
I understand his motives, my friend had a much harder time with it even though he and his father weren't especially close.

Faced with that I can see myself going out on a day like today (rainy, 34' F)
and going to sleep under the trees where my dogs are buried.

My father had Alzheimer's. My mother kept him home as long as she could care for him. Probably too long, but she wanted him to spend one last birthday in the house he grew up in.
He walked into the nursing home on his own power. Within a week he was bedridden. He stopped eating and died 6 weeks after entering the nursing home. He was never one to sit around, we always knew that he wouldn't last long there.

Writing this reminded me that I need to go home and fill out my living will.

 

[ultrarunner]

Yep... I'm around a lot of elderly and always have been...

The will to live is powerful...

Others, especially after all of friends/family have gone before may see living as a burden without purpose...

Family dynamics are all over the place... My neighbor passed over a hundred with three daughters plus grands and they rallied so that all was taken care of even with many 400 miles away...

For 2 years granddaughter attending UC Berkeley gave up her dorm to move in with grandpa... so he wouldn't be alone and especially over night...

They had a great relationship... she even said grandpa has a more active social life then she did as a third and fourth year student.

It's been two years but they are keeping the home as a family gathering place and they are always coming and going and the son in laws are very supportive... it can all work out.

 

[seville009]

 

[masseyrider]

It's your friends not their parents moving into retirement places.

 

[MoKelly]

It's your friends not their parents moving into retirement places.

Truth.

But, nowadays, many retirement communities are 50+.

As my former boss used to say “if I was 50 again I could beat a bear with a switch”!

 

[MoKelly]

I guess a sign you are old is if you read the obits before the sports or comics!

 

[garry1p]

I know I'm old.
The first thing I do every morning before I get out of bed is raise up the cover and see if I have a tag on my big toe.
If not I get out of bed knowing this is going to be another great day.

 

[Creamer]

I guess a sign you are old is if you read the obits before the sports or comics!

So I can blame it on the paper - the obits are on page two or four of the front section. The sports, comics, puzzles are all in the second section.

 

[masseyrider]

So I can blame it on the paper - the obits are on page two or four of the front section. The sports, comics, puzzles are all in the second section.

You can blame it on the fact you read a newspaper.
They still print those?
Last time I went to the dealership for some minor work I looked through one of the complimentary papers.
What used to kill a few trees could probably be printed on the wood chips a beaver leaves behind chewing a tree down.