a reply to:
droid56
Hmmm... I think, because of the nature of your post, I am better off addressing the question which forms your title.
I am only relatively young now, at the age of thirty two. I went to my grandmothers funeral yesterday. She did not know who her family members were
for YEARS before she died, to the extent that if I had visited her after her memory collapsed, she would have been unaware of who I was, despite all
the memories she and I created together, baking, walking, visiting my great grandmother, or out tending to the plants that my Nan cultivated in her
garden over the many years that she lived in her house, before her brain ceased correct function, and stole her away from her family.
During the period between the death of my grandfather, and my grandmothers death on the fourth of this month, she lived in a home, where very nice
people did a great job of looking after her, confirmed by my aunts, who visited with her regularly, despite the agony of being unknown to her...This
was only possible because my grandfather had been canny with money from their pensions, and an inheritance from my great grandmother, who had stashed
away a considerable sum in a series of hidden margarine containers, which were only found upon her home being emptied after her death.
Most people cannot afford that quality of care, no matter how hard they work or what work they do. Its rare, not common.
I may only be thirty two, but I have a pretty good idea of where my life is going, and no where fast is a pretty good description. Given that, I am
on the "I will never be able to afford to retire" diet, of cigarettes, fatty foods, drinking comedic amounts of rum, and doing precisely nothing that
does not immediately please me. No matter how much I spend on drink and cigarettes, it will avail me of nothing like what I would need to secure
myself in old age. However, I can afford to ensure I never have to worry about that, by beating the ever loving hell out of my body to the point where
survival past sixty or so is functionally impossible.
I do not fancy reaching an age where I cannot change my own underwear, or wash myself and make toilet without help. I do not fancy eating liquid
food, because my gums and teeth are not adequate to the task of shredding, tearing and crushing that which I consume. I have no desire to get bed
sores as a result of the amount of time I spend either laying or sitting down, nor to have to refer to some young whippersnapper before having a tot
of rum, should I so wish. Self determination is more important to me than continuing to be alive. If I check out before ever getting old enough to
lose one bit of range of motion in my limbs, one tiny slice of my independence, such as it is, then I will consider it a good thing.
If anyone ever says, when I do go from this world, that I went too young, I will reach across the veil between this world and the next, and box their
ears for being so daft. Going out too old is a much bigger imposition.