>>1659232Old age always kinda sucked and still sucks, but today you don't have to live in pain, with huge tumours hanging out of your neck, your teeth all gone eating only porridge, shitting in your pants, etc.
Nonetheless, the ravages of old age don't start hitting in your 50s or 60s like they did before. You typically have longer periods of 'good health'.
My grandmother is 97 and perfectly fit. We don't kid ourselves and know she doesn't have a lot of time left, but I can see easily her living past 100. She wears a hearing aid, her sense of balance is a little shaky, and her bones are more fragile (she's had a couple falls resulting in fractures). But, she still lives alone in her own home, she does her own shopping, she even drives (OK only in good weather/summer and during the day), she has her hobbies and people she meets (including us on a weekly or so basis). She has no chronic illnesses, she's mentally fit, sharp, makes jokes (pretty modern sense of humour for a lady of her generation) and knows what's going on around her. She eats mostly normal food which she makes herself. We help her out with things of course, but she's largely capable on her own if need be.
There is no rule you have to be elders in a nursing home. Maybe that's common in your family or society, because you have no respect. The medicated vegetable waiting to die which you describe is your fate mostly only if you sit around watching TV for 90 years anyway. If that's how you live, you're not /out/. Most people waste their lives, true, so why do you need longer retirement to waste it some more?
