Elderly

I have just spent the past 24 hours on vigil by the bedside of a dying friend. He is 18 months older than me and looks 100.

He is undoubtedly elderly, whereas I was able to sit on an extremely uncomfortable chair, wide awake from 3pm yesterday to 9am this morning.
Of course I had already been awake 9 hours before called to the hospital.

And I will not be sleeping for many hours yet.

What quirk of fate or genes makes two people of similar age, so very different in constitution? One quite definitely elderly and one with (apparently) the constitution of an ox

BradfordLass, the difference is often explained by good diet, exercise, immunity, genetics and positive thinking. All that must help but mainly, it seems, life chances are just a lottery. Some of us are lucky, some not, that's all.

My dear husband was as fit as a fiddle, cycled eight miles to work and back etc. but was suddenly struck down by leukemia and died at 52. I was the 'unfit' one, yet on I go.

Yes Hetty58 I believe you are right.

I have to say though that two friends of mine, vegetarian for 30 years, both keen cyclists and fairly positive did not fare so well either.

He had a stroke at 62 and spent the next 12 years in a rest home. She got cancer at 74, had treatment and was cleared and then told that the very medication the hospital had used had caused a new condition which killed her within a few months. There's no accounting for things like this, is there?

I am so sorry your poor husband was attacked by that insidious disease, what a tragedy for you both.

I'm 77 and certainly look elderly when I see myself in the mirror first thing in the morning, but after washing and styling my hair and sticking a bit of makeup on, then I feel I look like a spring chicken again. (Or am I kidding myself?)

Turned 70 in July and I don't care what I'm called, just delighted to still be here and in reasonable health.
As my (four years older) brother said on my birthday, "Every day now is a bonus" and how right he is.
Just live as much as you can for as long as you can, that's all there is to it.