Old age is not for sissies

I'm a young senior, still fit and active, having the time of my life. But lately I've been getting an unvarnished look at what could be ahead if I make it to my nineties, as lots of people do these days. My mother disappeared slowly into the fog of dementia, and spent the last six weeks of her life totally paralyzed, unable to use her voice, not even to call out. My aunt and uncle are forced to live apart, after sixty-nine years of marriage, while one goes to a chronic care hospital and the other to a nursing home. We've done our best to be there for them and give them our love and support, but you just can't sugarcoat what they've lost.

If someday I have to face things like that, I hope the school of hard knocks will have given me the strength and resilience to handle them with grace. I can make sure I don't have any regrets, by living life to the fullest and signing my peace treaties now. And as for death, why fear it? If I find myself in a long, miserable decline, then I might be perfectly content to see it come to an end. And if I die suddenly, then there will be no time to fear anything.

I'm with Montaigne. Let death find me planting my cabbages, not caring about him, and even less about my imperfect garden.