Living The Dream

Perhaps thirty years ago, Estelle Getty, in her "Golden Girls" role as Sophia, stated, "I'm old; I can do what I want."

I was primed.

Recently, someone on a public forum asked if it was hard to be elderly, and I decided to answer:

I’m in my early sixties and retired last year without any money to speak of. My knees are shot and I’m working on other things that I think are reversible.

Even with what I seem to lack, I’m living the dream. I have a stable marriage and great kids from a previous marriage. As a retiree, I have time to work on myself when I care to. I am happy and free and because of that, I’m okay with my physical condition and mentally prepared to manage as best I can physically and financially.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of poor people and while I did not consider myself a specimen of robustness, people look at me on the bus because many of them are in very poor health. Even on Social Security, I can afford better food and a dentist now and then and while I wish I had taken better care of my teeth, the differences seem notable to some.

In the looks department, I never had much in the way of looks to lose but find that as an elder, I can honestly consider myself a handsome woman. Strangers remark on my smile.

In spite of tobacco and alcohol use, less developed medical care, and more fatty diets, my parents were more hale at my age than I am although between mid-sixties and seventies, they started to run into problems. My late mother, a nurse, would have summed it up by saying that we now have the problems we have because, unlike past generations in our family, we are living long enough to have these particular problems.

With her advice in mind, no matter what physical or financial condition you are in as an elder, attitude goes a long way, and my parents were very good scouts, setting my expectation that I will prevail in some manner.

So, is it hard being elderly? In my case, no or at least, not yet. Instead, I’m living the dream.