Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
I've known quite a few people who live good, active lives into their 80s.
But man it's downhill fast from there. The 90s look like absolute shit. Just a bunch of people feeling pain all the time and watching their friends die. Their minds are slipping and the real unfortunate ones know it so they're just mad about it all the time.
I think I'd probably be fine checking out around 88. Kids would be in their mid 50s. Grandkids to/through college. I'm good at that point. Great Grandkids don't pay shit for attention to their great grandparents for the most part. Not gonna be much more traveling worth doing.
Gives me another 45 years. Yeah - that seems good.
My wife's grandmother was going strong well into her 90s. She lived alone, still drove, pretty much completely took care of herself. Hell, she still bowled regularly. Then she got in a car wreck and they took her license. After that, she became dependent on others and started to slip. Within a year they put her in assisted living and sold her house. Not long after that, nursing home. Eventually the family decided to move her from Syracuse to a home in our area in Chicago so my MIL could be closer to her. God, she was PISSED about that. After that, she pretty much quit talking to anybody and just looked mad all the time. All she wanted was to go home and be left the hell alone.
At 97, she suffered the stroke that would kill her a week later over 4th of July weekend of 2014 - part of my Great Death Weekend. In addition to her, I lost a cousin, an aunt and my paternal grandmother over the course of three days. That was fucking surreal. Every time the phone rang somebody else was dead. All the deaths were unrelated - the cousin died of cancer and the others died of old age. Spent the next two weeks going to funerals from New York to Missouri.
One other thing about my wife's grandmother - she's the only person I've ever actually seen die. Everybody else was in the next room talking and I was watching her. She took a breath and then.... didn't take another one. That was fucked up.
I don't really enjoy the 4th of July anymore.
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