I keep hearing of people being 90 and older. I googled what % of 65 yr. old Americans will live to be 90 but I didn't get any very clear answer other than the odds of living to 90 or 100 are rising everywhere. I guess the odds are pretty good, even for males. I did read that 75% of current Americans 90 or older are women.
I also read a couple of articles by Steve Vernon, one titled "Living Too Long is a Risk!" I guess an experienced actuary and financial advisor would use such a title, complete with exclamation point, because he feels that outliving your money supply is a horrible thought. Ok, it is a risk to drive a car, to be a passenger in a car, to stay at home all the time, to go down stairs, to go up stairs, etc., etc. I personally have been taking risks since before I was born. I often take risks that I don't realize I am taking, such as living on a planet that travels through space on an orbit that intersects with the orbits of 90,000 other celestial objects. I took that particular risk for decades before I realized the number of possible intersecting objects was so high. Once I have learned of the risk from author Bill Bryson in "A Short History of Nearly Everything", I have kept right on living on the same planet, basically ignoring the risk. I am fairly indifferent to the problem but basically I don't know of anything else to do.
I have gained a new respect for the spectrum of feelings, memories and worries associated with aging, disability, pain and death. I do admire the writing, the acting and the story lines created in "Grey's Anatomy" and of course, a good deal of what goes on in a major urban hospital deals with living and dying. Older episodes are available for streaming and we have been watching an episode a night for since the summer. During that same time, we read Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal", a consideration of many aspects of the last parts of our lives, including death. Both sources show how sensible and intelligent people, contending with the forces of love and of the biological urge to live and keep on living, can veer off into unexpected stances when approaching their death or that of others close to them.
