Being over 70

I'm sure there are lots of websites, books etc. that detail the aging process, but it seems to me that talking to some older folks might be the best thing for you to do. Relatives? Friends of the family? A visit to a retirement community, maybe?

Boy, talk about being insulting - I'm not over 70 but I'm getting there. How dare you call me (and the rest of us) elderly?

One thing you have to understand is - there's no one size fits all - with how people react to age and what they can do. Characteristics you developed for your character when she was in midlife are still going to be relevant unless she's become afflicted with some sort of malady - diabetes, Alzheimers, cancer, artherioschlerosis (sp?), arthritis, etc. You might want to think about that first before you figure out what you're character will be like.

From my experience, there's not much difference in being "elderly" versus midlife except that some things aren't done so fast (and others faster) or at quite the same level of intensity (but others are moreso). Take a good look at your character and figure out what that person would have fought to retain and what she would have been willing to let go by the wayside. Hope that helps. Puma

Hey, dude or Doc, I'm 72 and don't feel any different to when I was 22. As Puma states, it all depends upon the individual and their individual circumstances.

Age equals being or acting old or eldery or having problems per se (or vice-versa) just doesn't equate.

I'm with Bufty, although my "point" of not changing is 27.

Here in the states, the majority of senior citizens live in their own homes until death. Some (mostly with more than enough money) live in retirement centers that have all the amenities and options of self-sufficient living. People in centers like that may make new circles of friends, but also will retain their old friends. The centers have options of self-sufficiency, managed care, or even full time care - but places like this are pretty expensive. A few older people with problems go to nursing homes where they can have round the clock care if needed. Those are the ones who suffer most from loss of friendship.

In my frame of reference, everyone has / is staying in their own homes - my Dad was in his until he died at age 91, my husband's mother was in hers until she suffered debilitating illness at 88 (up until then she'd been volunteering to help at the senior citizens center.) My sister and her husband are currently downsizing from a 26 room old inn (they ran a bed and breakfast) to a one story two bedroom at ages 81 and 87. My 79 year old brother and wife live in their home - he has some memory problems but still bicycles and snow skiis. My 77 year old brother and wife live in their own home and travel extensively. With the exception of my brother and father, all of these people have / had exceptional mental accuity.

My husband and I are 65. He's had major health problems (physical), but still does what he wants to do, but on a much cut down basis. I retired this year and have spent 6 or so hours a day while the weather was good cutting out brush, mowing, working in the garden, walking in the fields, etc. I'm very active in community projects - and there's still hardly anything I won't try (but sometimes I feel it in the knees and hips after I do.)

So yes, a bit of the casting "older people" as debilitated and deficient is badly overdone. That help? Puma

Middle age is from 20 to 90. The experience of aging is quite individual. There are people who are falling apart at fifty, and there are people who are in very good shape at ninety. I think that you will have to decide how your character aged; whether at a mere 75 she is a vegetable or a mountain climber.

True story:

When I was just out of high school, I assisted my mother in teaching ceramics to senior citizens. This was defined by the center as over 55, FWIW. The range of our students went from 57 to 93, with the majority of them in their early 70's.

They were GREAT. Always laughing, talking, poking fun, and some of them had amazing detail in the pieces they painted/glazed.

There was one woman (the 56 yo) who complained about everything and was such a PITA that she couldn't be bothered to get a jar of paint just out of her reach. Someone had to step 'n' fetch it for her.

Then there was a gent who was in his late 70's who had more vim and vigor (he called it 'piss & vingear') than I did at 19. On a bet, he ran circles around my mom (5'5" @ about 300 lbs at the time--so very round) for 3 minutes before sitting down and laughing his butt off. Mom laughed a lot too.

I know an 80 yo woman who's remodeling her garden herself and laid her own flagstone path by herself last summer.

Aging is a very individual thing. Disease will affect it, but my experience is that the person's outlook matters far more in how they age than anything.

I know a man in his fifties who ended up living in a senior citizen community because he's low-income and in a wheelchair. Within months, he became severely depressed. I knew someone else who had moved out of this same apartment community six months earlier, for the same reasons.

My observation. Older people with a little bit of money in the bank aren't as miserable as those who are living in the projects. I used to visit my friend in this senior citizen community, and it was full of old bats who complained about everything.

My relatives live in a posh retirement community. They have neighbors - one is 102 - and she still drives, golfs and plays bridge. There are sick people, but they're the type who will drag the oxygen tank with them on the golf course. It amazed me to see the difference in the two communities, and I really think it's all about the money. The racial, religious and ethnic groups were similar in both communities, but the older folks who had some money - and my relatives are not rich, just retired civil servants with decent pensions - seem much happier.

You hit the nail on the head, Deleyanlee - attitude is everything - you're only as old as you let yourself be.

However, I do agree with JulieHowe that money can play a big part in how content people are with aging. Lack of money bites at all ages. Puma

Let's see. I'm only 68, so I'm not old-old yet. Yes, the old-old folks I know are 70 and way over . . . like 71 or even 72. After that you're just a vegetable, I've heard. Well, not heard, as I don't hear none too good.

For just old (not old-old), how my day starts depends. I mean I have to change my Depends. After that I push my wheel walker to the kitchen for gruel. Gruel is like runny grits, only cold and no butter. The upside is you don't have to gum it much. By then it's noon and no use leaving the table . . . and since they started putting the buckle on my restraints in back, I often can't leave the table.

More Depends and TV in the afternoon. Love that Opra.

Nap . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . Depends.

Then to bed (which is a lot like the nap, only it's not in a chair).

I sure hope this helps with what expect when you're almost 70.

Chase mutters, " Some people's kids!"

Don't write an "elderly" person. Just write a person. Putting labels on characters leads to stereotypes.

Seventy isn't all that old. Many people at 70 are still doing the same things they did twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Some are still in the workforce; I worked with a 70-year-old woman at my last position. Your 70-year-old character will have a richer wealth of life experience to draw on than the young folks do, but she's not necessarily going to seem stereotypically "elderly" unless she's had some health problems.

ETA: Forgot to say that if she's retired she may have noticed she misses working (although I can't imagine why anyone would ) and the relationships she had with folks at work. Even if she tries to keep up those relationships, her frame of reference would now be different, and she may not feel as close to those folks as before. She may also be exploring new hobbies or looking for part-time work. Also, some folks get very depressed after retiring and feel their lives are meaningless now.

DrZoidberg said:

I suspect it's very culturally sensitive which terminology for persons over seventy is acceptable versus offensive. I live in Sweden. I simply translated the Swedish term "äldre" which literately translates to "elderly". It's the phase of life after middle-age. It's a neutral term.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

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"The phase of life after middle-age" is after middle age, not toward the end of middle age.

I sell real estate. I have several clients who, at 50, are looking for one-level living so they don't have to climb stairs. I know some who are waiting until they are 55-years old and can move into active-seniors housing. I have no clue as to why they are assuming that physical and mental problems are a given.

I just had my 57th birthday and spent a couple of days before that climbing around on a rope course, 30 ft. above the ground. If you call me 'elderly' I'd kick you in the shins. I am not an athlete – never was – but I am certainly not ready to be an frail old lady.

Most of my friends, including my husband, are nine or more years younger than me. Perhaps that's part of my staying young, but I think it's mostly my bad attitude.

Oh, the term you mentioned for a sexy older woman, "Puma" is "Cougar" in the US. (I am not one.)

DrZoidberg said:

I suspect it's very culturally sensitive which terminology for persons over seventy is acceptable versus offensive. I live in Sweden. I simply translated the Swedish term "äldre" which literately translates to "elderly". It's the phase of life after middle-age. It's a neutral term.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

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Not the point. I would've said the same thing if you'd asked how to write a young person or a female person or a gay person or a whatever kind of person. Just write a person. Labels lead to stereotypes.

My wife and I are in our sixties. She works full time from a home office. I'm retired, but consider writing a full-time hobby. I have arthritis, which restricts what I'm physically able to do, but other than that, I don't feel any different than I did decades ago.
Yesterday, I was presented with some under-the-sink plumbing. I cold only stay down on my knees for short periods and had trouble getting up because of problems with my hips. Today, they ache like the dickens, but it didn't stop me from doing the job.

All I gotta to say to you is... don't blink. In two months, you'll be fifty. Then, in four weeks, you'll be 70. Time flies! That's how fast it goes.

I'm a happier person at *cough-cough* than I was in my 20's.

My "elderly" 72-year-old husband drives a Ferrari. It's low to the ground and hard to get into - so my hubby has told me, repeatedly, that when I can no longer get into the passenger side - he'll trade me in, not the Ferrari!

Carlene

DrZoidberg said:

Thanks, good to know. But I must say, I'm thirty four and I don't feel remotely like when I was twenty two. Maybe I was unusually immature and silly, but me at twenty was nothing I'd like to experience again.

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So true. I am 58, and I don't feel remotely the way I did when I was 20, 30, o4 40. For one thing, priorities change. For another, I have made sure that I change and grow with the years. So I feel much better now than I did when I was in my 20's and wouldn't go back for a million pounds.

PeterL said:

Middle age is from 20 to 90. The experience of aging is quite individual. There are people who are falling apart at fifty, and there are people who are in very good shape at ninety. I think that you will have to decide how your character aged; whether at a mere 75 she is a vegetable or a mountain climber.

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...and attitude is everything. I firmly believe that we are in charge of our own ageing process. I know a man of 65 who looks and behaves like an old, stooped, bent man. He has health issues so he can't help it -- on the other hand, he was his whole life long a pessimist, fearful, a hypochondriac, stubborn, fixed in his ways. As he gets older thise attributes seem to grow only stronger, making him age earlier.

I have a friend who turned 100 last July. She lives all by herself in a house in the French Alsation mountains. She is there all winter, and has no neighbours. A woman comes in to cook and clean for her, and she no longer works in the garden, which was always her passion, and since she fell and broke her hip last year (aged 99) she has a stick to walk with. Apart from that she is as astute, positive, lively, intersted in life, as much as she always has been.

My own mother turned 90 this year. I haven't seen her for several years as she lives on a different continent -- still in her own home, looking after herself, feisty and active in politics as she always was. When I talk to her on the phone worrying about "what she is going to do in her old age" she cuts me off saying she has never had a sick day in her life and doesn't want to go anywhere, and if I were to send for her "you would only put me in a wheelchair". She has no other chilldren, no other family members in the whole country but lots of friends and has always taken care of others. So now, others take care of her and they let me know how she is doing. And that seems to be "OK".

I actually look forward to my own old age, as I feel it will be the very best time in my life. I have great ideas as to where I will be and what I will do, and believe me, they are pretty big ideas!

Ageism is probably the most hypocritical of the "isms" as we are all going to get there one day unless we die; so who are the young to look down upon the old? I am convinced that the way one treats the old is exactly the way a person will age themselves -- with grace and good spirits; or the opposite.

I can offer some input.

My father is 72 and has Parkinsons. He's becoming more forgetful as he grows older, has more health problems, walks with a shuffle, has lost interest in pretty much doing everything. It's sad to see happen, especially when he used to do so many things. (He used to be an electronics design engineer, built the house, taught me how to do plumbing, electrical, basic carpentry.)

Then, on the flipside, several friends of mine are in their 70s and 80s. They are more full of life and do more things than friends of ours our own age. And a couple of them are quite wealthy; one owns a growing, custom train set that takes up his entire basement. Another owns at least three 1920s cars and a mansion that has five player pianos in it--two of which are reproducing pianos.

I suppose there is an "average" person in his or her 70s, but it depends on health, level of activity, even finances sometimes.