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June 7, 2015

‘I am old and I feel and look old.’

Her frankness is rare. Old age, as it becomes more common, is talked about less.

If old people are praised for anything it is usually for being ‘splendid’ in some unspecified way which really means, as Miller points out, that they don’t look or seem truly old. In obituaries of long-lived public figures there is often, she notices, an ominous gap towards the end. After all the achievements, the marriages, the medals and the anecdotes there may be a decade or more unaccounted for before the date of death. Speculating on what might have filled it Miller lists the terrors of old age, the modern four last things that have replaced death, judgment, heaven and hell: ‘boredom, illness, dementia, solitude’. -- Rosemary Hill Crazy Age: Thoughts on Being Old

Posted by gerardvanderleun at June 7, 2015 10:26 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

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Posted by: Stug Guts at June 9, 2015 12:34 PM

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