When I was 25, I didn't envision myself living past sixty; now that I'm 47; my outlook has changed. I think I'm rather typical, when you are young, the future seems to stretch on forever--- the older you get-- the quicker time passes, and your remaining years seem pitiful short. I hope that couple didn't leave anything to their wonderful children.
I comfort myself with denial, "Old" is always 10 years older than you are. :-)
When young, I was always conscious that one day, barring accident or fatal illness, I would get old too, and be so for a good portion of life. Also aware, increasingly so in '30s that the way I regarded old people, the stereotypes I held, would form my own self image. All the "you old bag/hag," all the jokes about senility, all the patronizing, would inform personal identity, how I thought about myself. Accordingly I looked for the role models in good, the wise, the still-engaged, the strong in adversity. The Georgia O'Keefes, Beatrice Woods, Mother Theresas. Even aesthetically, finding a beauty in weathered and 'craggy' (as males are often called, insteady of crone-like, wrinkly or wizened).
Are there cranky, nasty, greedy elderly? Well of course and in plentiful, cantakerous supply. I maintain the vast majority of these were always nasty and greedy, perhaps less inhibited and better able to camouflage their natures. Less attractively, according to youthful standards, packaged.
Ageism, unlike other prejudices, will be its own punishment in the end.
I think that mental preparation has paid off. Luck and genes has something to do with it too. I seriously don't feel whatever I thought this age would 'feel like'. If health were poor, sight were dim and step weren't sure, it might.
