Category: Old Age

Ending It All

Old Age

I remember reading David Niven’s wonderful autobiography The Moon’s A Balloon, back when I were but a callow yoof, and being saddened by Niven’s story about the brilliant actor George Sanders.

Sanders declared that at age 70 he would commit suicide, because “my cock will have stopped working, my memory will be fading and all the joy will have gone from my life.”  And he was true to his word.

The above was sparked by reading this article:

The Kessler twins — a German entertainment duo who became famous both in the US and throughout Europe beginning in the 1950s — have died at 89 after choosing to end their lives together.

The singing and dancing sisters reportedly died together in their home in Grünwald, near Munich.

The Kessler twins once were known for making the rounds on American talk shows and performing with multi-hyphenate entertainment giants, including Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis Jr., among other stars.

Apparently, the sisters ‘no longer wanted to live’ and ‘had chosen to end their lives together.’ 

Here they are back then:

As I said, back in my youth I would not have understood that feeling, that life had passed and now needed to end.

Now, on my 71st birthday, I can understand that feeling a whole lot better.

Before anyone starts reading something else into that statement, let me assure you all that there’s no cause for alarm.  My health is excellent — not just for a septuagenarian, but for a man of any age, my doctor reassures me — and I still have some unfinished business on Ye Olde Bucquette Lystte (patience, Salma).  Please do not concern yourselves.

I truly understand how George Sanders and the Kessler sisters felt — but I don’t feel that way for myself.

We can revisit this topic, however, when I turn 90.

Rejected (Again), With Prejudice

Old Age

I have told the story before about how, in the days after 9/11, I called up an acquaintance who worked at the Pentagon to see how I could volunteer for the National Guard or similar, to patrol airports or do something equivalent that would involve protecting something or someone.

As it happened, he was busy brushing concrete dust from his hair, in a manner of speaking, and he told me a) that if the ragheads attacked the North Side of Chicago, I’d get a call from him, and b) to fuck off and stop bothering him because he had better things to do than deal with a cranky overweight old fart who couldn’t patrol a living room without frequent rest stops.  (I was 47 years old at the time.)

I mention this tale of woe only because of this development:

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now waiving age limits for new applicants “so even more patriots will qualify to join ICE in its mission to arrest murderers, pedophiles, gang members, rapists, and other criminal illegal aliens from America’s streets.”

Well, even though I’m now a sprightly youngster of 70 — soon to be 71 — that magic phrase “waiving age limits” was like a spur to my civic consciousness, and I thought, “Why the hell not?”

Surely I could do something for the cause, even if it was just working a desk or driving a vehicle, thus freeing up some younger guy to perform, shall we say, more energetic activities?

Alas.  The very next statement from the lovely Kristi ended that little dream:

“All ICE law enforcement recruits will be required to go through medical screening, drug screening, and complete a physical fitness test.”

Ah, shit.  Medical screening:  no problem.  My doctor has assured me that I am, if anything, healthier than I’ve been in over a decade.  Drug screening:  forget that, unless a positive test for BP meds or statins is a disqualifier, I’m good to go.

But a physical fitness test?  Aw, shit.  No way will I get through that, because even though I’ve lost considerable weight (thankee Ozempic), I doubt whether I could do more than a few pushups, and as for running some distance longer than, say, running to catch a bus to the pub, I’m screwed.

As the saying goes:  the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak — in my case, beyond redemption.

I think I’ll go to the range.

A Good Death

Grief & Loss, Old Age, Wildlife and Hunting

I was chatting to a close and dear friend, who told me of the death of one of her closest friends.

Apparently this guy had been a surgeon, who’d retired when he could no longer do it.  Since then, he’d devoted himself to doing what he loved:  fishing and hunting wild boar in Europe.

Seems as though he’d been doing the latter fun stuff in the Lower Pyrenees, an area renowned for its matchless rural scenery:  high cliffs, deep ravines, sparkling streams of ice-cold water, you get the picture.

Anyway, he’d just shot a huge boar and using his cell phone, called his friends over on the next ridge to tell them this, but added that he wasn’t feeling too well.  When his friends finally got there, they found him sprawled next to the boar, dead of a massive and unforeseen heart attack.  He was in his mid-seventies.

Of course, my friend was all torn up over this death of a good friend, but let’s just think about this for a moment.

After a long, successful life, a man dies amidst gorgeous scenery, doing something he loved,  something very manly withal — having just dispatched a massive, dangerous boar — and his own death was likewise quick and probably reasonably painless.

Is there anyone reading this who isn’t the teeniest bit envious of Our Aged, Intrepid Hunter?

Feelin’ Groovy

Health, Old Age, Old Fartism

This is one of those boffins’ studies which ordinarily make my eyes glaze over (MEGO):

Drawing on data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the findings reveal that today’s older adults demonstrate better physical and mental functioning than their counterparts of earlier generations at the same age.

…but in my case, I have to say that I agree with the thing’s conclusion, just by comparing myself now to myself back then.

I not only feel the same as I did when I was 60, a decade ago, but I actually feel better.

In no small degree, I think this is because I’ve lost so much weight (thank you, Ozempic) and my health stats seem to have massively improved.

My mood has improved since November 2024 too (for obvious reasons) but beyond that, I feel as though I haven’t aged at all.  Hell, sometimes I think I’m better off now than I was at fifty.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.  (No, not to the gym;  the hell with that shit.)

Age Limit

Old Age

Most people, men especially, consider themselves to be excellent drivers.  If truth be told, however, most people aren’t even good drivers, as witnessed by the appalling number of car crashes that occur every year on the roads and streets of the world.

I’m not even referring to crashes that occur through outright stupidity or recklessness, and I’m certainly not going to open the festering can of worms known as “Wimmen Drivers”;  not in this post, anyway.

I consider myself to be a competent driver in that I’ve only ever had a couple of serious accidents in well over four decades of driving — not serious in that people were injured, but serious enough that cars were either written off or close to being so.  And yes, some were technically the fault of the other driver, but once again, I can also assume at least a little culpability in that perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention to the traffic.

What bothers me — and I’ve noticed it a lot recently — is that as I’m getting older, my driving skill is declining.  Some of it is physical:  my neck and body are stiffer, making it more difficult, for example, to turn to look behind me;  and my reflexes certainly aren’t what they used to be either, which means I can’t drive on auto-pilot anymore and have to concentrate really hard on what’s going on around me.

The latter certainly came to mind when I read about this little tragedy:

A man and woman were killed after an Audi ploughed into them as they were visiting a popular seaside resort at the end of the summer holidays.

The pair, in their 60s, were walking in Anglesey when the car swerved to avoid a horse and carriage before ploughing into them. The driver, a man in his 80s, also died at the scene.

(I don’t know what the car’s make has to do with the story, but it is the awful Daily Mail, after all, so maybe a little gratuitous class hatred was needed to make the story a little more spicy.)

From an eyewitness:

One local said: ‘The Audi swerved to go around a horse and carriage, mounted the pavement and hit pedestrians who were walking past a house – they didn’t stand a chance.’

It seems pretty clear that the Olde Phartte was going too fast — this didn’t happen on a freeway but on a narrow city street, after all — and that he either didn’t leave enough room to brake, or else he lost control during the swerve and smashed into the luckless pedestrians before hitting the wall.  (And in a modern car (like the Audi), you have to be going really fast to be killed by crashing into a wall.)

Or else his octogenarian reflexes were like mud, and he left it all too late.

I know that Olde Pharttes get a bad rap for the heinous sin of Driving Too Slowly, but I’ve noticed myself slowing down a lot when I drive these days, because I’m fully aware that my reflexes are those of an older man, and not some young whippersnapper in his forties.

There’s a reason why modern F1 drivers don’t carry on racing into their fifties.  Even once-world champs like Fernando Alonso (43) and Lewis Hamilton (39) are quite aware that their days of F1 racing are very much numbered.  (I know:  the peerless Juan Manuel Fangio raced almost into his fifties, but the F1 cars of his day ran at less than half the speed of today’s.)

Anyway, I am (perhaps surprisingly) in favor of stricter driving tests for Olde Pharttes like myself.  When my current license expires, I will have to retake the practical and theoretical tests as though I were a newbie driver, and I will do so willingly.  Because I would hate to be like that 80-year-old in the above tragedy, killed (and killer) because I was, quite simply, driving beyond my capabilities.

As Dirty Harry (himself quite an Olde Phartte) said once:  “A man has to know his limitations.”  And I’m certainly aware of mine, when it comes to driving anyway.

It’s called maturity, and it’s well past time that I started showing some.

Front Line Analogy

Old Age

I like to think of Life as a journey to the WWI frontline trenches, said trenches being old age, where death is almost certain if you stay there long enough.  (Feel free to spin this out in your imagination.)

I was drawn to the analogy when reading about Bruce Willis being given birthday best wishes by his ex-wife Demi Moore.  Willis is suffering from aphasia , and has just turned 69.

I’m 69.

And here’s why I’m thinking of old age as being like being in the trenches.

There are so many ways to die, at any age, but if one dies at a young age it’s more a result of either a random tragedy (brain cancer at 39, or a heart attack at 18, and so on) or else the equivalent of playing Russian roulette, say by smoking a pack of unfiltered Camels every day, riding a motorcycle without a helmet or living in the South Side projects of Chicago.  (The WWI equivalent would be dying in a car accident while driving to the station or losing your head by sticking it out of the moving train’s window, i.e. going before your time.)

But once you’re in the frontline trenches — that being old age — there are any number of ways that can snuff out Life’s Little Candle, because the Boche are throwing all sorts of shit at you:  shelling, poison gas and snipers being the equivalent of kidney disease, aortic aneurism, stroke, heart attack, diverticulitis and so on.  You get the picture.

I have been extraordinarily lucky so far, in that pretty much all my ailments have been recoverable either by my own body’s healing function or else by medication.  (That said medication becomes more necessary is borne out by the fact that pills once taken for a day or two are now a permanent fixture and the morning routine involves something like a saunter along the Rx shelves at CVS.)  And my physical condition has actually improved recently in that I’ve shed a lot of weight — granted, through said medication, but whatever — and I’m reasonably spry as a result.

But there’s no fucking cure for aphasia, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease or any of the brain ailments which end one’s life horribly.  And sure, you can get those at any time during your life — but once you reach the Golden Years, those illnesses become more and more likely, and the Golden Years become more like the Golden Shower Years, where Life pisses on you from all directions.  (And I’m not even talking about extraneous squirts of urine like the IRS or Bidenflation, don’t get me started.)

What the hell.  So far, so good.  I’m in decent health for my age, the doctor tells me, and would be in better shape if I just quit eating all that shit that’s bad for me but which gives me such pleasure that I refuse to quit.

Screw that.  If there’s some Boche sniper out there loading up a bullet with my name on it, I might as well eat that piece of lovely, fatty boerewors, right?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my Breakfast Gin.  Cheers.