WANTED MANUAL: HOW TO BE, LOOK AND ACT OLD

Like everything else, old is not one-size-fits-all.  Old can start when some of your friends are in middle age or not until your 9th decade or more.  Being old can leave you surrounded with friends and family, or totally alone.  Alone seems to be the most difficult for some.  They get cats for whom they have to tend litter boxes just to have this hairy thing rub up against them. Or they get dogs who get them up at dawn and who they have to walk and popper scoop in all kinds of weather when the rest of us can snuggle in our beds.   When the friends in whom you have confided are all gone before you, you are left alone searching for someone whom you can trust.  Your children needn't be burdened with your loneliness, the loss of much of your strength and stamina, and least of all do they need to hear how your miss having someone to physically love.  All children believe their parents had sex once, holding their noses and blushing wildly, only to conceive them.  Parents look back with very different memories and wonder if any of their passion was inherited by their children as they remember when.....

Old age can leave one with many fears:  How will I survive on a FIXED income? What will I do if I lose my house and everything that is familiar to me...neighbors, memories and my toys? Why are my children so far away when I might need them? How will I handle my arthritis and loss of strength when there is still so much I have to do?  and on and on.....

Remembering how boring old people had seemed to you when you were younger, you hope you will not become boring yourself. (though most don't realize they are repeating themselves because they can't remember what they just said)   How can people who do little, see  no one, read little, watch game shows and sports rather than politics (because they are easier to follow), not be boring?  Not even old people really want to hear about other's physical problems when they are facing their own. Of course, since they retain little of that boring stuff from friends, they can hear the same stuff every time they meet hopefully not too often since medical appointments take up a good deal of their time.  For marrieds, that is double time.

Despair in old age is when  younger people have an image of what you should be and you're not it.  You are not  just sitting waiting for them.   Oddly, you become a generation called "great" as in aunt or grandmother or whatever.  There is nothing to indicate that others think you great at all.  You are welcomed out of duty to family parties but really can lonely let loose with friends who appreciate who you are and don't get defensive if you voice an opinion which is not a directive at all.

In all, old age looks far worse to those who haven't gotten there yet.  Once there, it does not seem so bad after all. There is, you see, a light at the end of the tunnel.  It can be good (Heaven), bad (Hell) or nothingness (Oblivion).