They seem to know.

After my mother passed, I found an old essay talking about when her father (my grandfather) passed. She wrote that the last time we saw him, he seemed to know something was up, and then died that night.

My other grandfather figured it out after a blood test determined that he only had a few days left. His kids (including my dad) weren't going to tell him. He was 102 and otherwise healthy. Then, he wheeled himself across the nursing home into the meeting with the social worker, and announced the funeral home, church, and cemetery that his arrangements were with. He had such a big smile too. He "won" and couldn't ask for anything more.

I'm so sorry.

> At least it doesn't try to snipe me into feeling bad, or scared about everything.

That's the guardian for you. They can't write an article without making sure the reader comes away feeling like a piece of shit. This piece should just be a celebration of Ginny's remarkable life, but they'll still make sure that you know that there are kids starving in Africa and elderly people working past retirement because they have no money.

I also love positive.news, and I subscribe to their newsletter. It's great.

Many old people do valuable work even though they are not in the workforce. They are the backbone of many voluntary organizations, they are often the backbone of their apartment complex taking on janitorial work and administrative work, they are baby sitters, home work assistants, they taken on small jobs no one else want to like election clerks and exam monitors. Some start up a small business so the community can get access to their expertise. One guy I know closed his musical instruments repair shop a few years ago, but started up again in smaller scale because there were no one else local to do the work.

growing number of Americans who extend their working days well past the typical retirement age as the cost of living in the US has soared, wages have stagnated and many therefore have been unable to save.

Calling this a blessing in the larger context is unconscionable. The USA is the richest country in the world. If someone needs to work into their 100s, it is a sign of failure from our political leaders.

Additionally, "working" and "having a purpose" should not be conflated like this. These are separate things.

> Being 100 and still capable of working is a blessing

A much under-appreciated blessing. At any age.

Over the past half-ish century, I've visited any number of elderly relatives and friends who were living in the US's long-term care facilities. However bright the decor, or kind the care staff - there is a very bleak "people whose ability to do anything useful has died, waiting for the rest of death" aura to them.

I’m generation X. My grandmother will be 97 in March. Her memory is actually really good. She gets frustrated when she’s talking about family and doesn’t recall a specific name of a great- or great-great-grandchild (With five generations alive at the same time, that’s a lot of names. I call my kids and my granddaughter the wrong name all the time - ah the human condition), but her mind is doing well.

Many times, I have mentioned how things have changed in the last century, how most of the things we make use of now were developed and refined in the last 100 years - industrial machinery, communications, computers …

There’s a simpleness to her experience. She is most definitely a beneficiary of society. She has lived comfortably without the need to understand how everything works; and hasn’t had the curiosity to question.

I’m not sure I have a point, but I do personally find it a little disappointing to have someone who lived through so much without having the ability to discuss it at depth.

Some people lived through amazing change. My grandmother was born in the late 1890s in rural Wales, and died at 95. She remembered electricity coming to her village and the visit of the first motor car, the arrival of radio and telephones. She saw men land on the moon and towards the end of her life went to the USA on a 747. Yet when she was a girl she lived with older farm workers who had never been more than ten miles from where they were born.

It's the senescence that makes the fall, more or less, inevitable. Warren Buffet wrote about it in his final letter to shareholders [1] : "When balance, sight, hearing and memory are all on a persistently downward slope, you know Father Time is in the neighborhood."

[1] - https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov1025.pdf

It’s not the fall. It’s the enforced idleness afterwards.

Lol me too

I went looking for information on the oldest known lobster, and found this article about a 20lb lobster named George who was estimated to be 140 years old. Neat!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_(lobster)

Early reports by European colonists in New England suggest some of the lobsters back then were far bigger than today.

* Fishing's not catching,

* I just pulled up a family video of several kids, mine, my siblings, friends, making commercial marbles for sale pulling glass from a furnace and rolling them on a bench, using optic moulds, canes for decoration, etc .. at the age of five.

Sure, we weren't running them like chimney sweeps or coal mine donkeys 24/7 - that's what they wanted to do for pocket money - make their own, how ever many, and sell them.

Presumably that's why they said "almost a century" and not just "a century".

She started working at the age of 8. Which we both know from reading the article.

It's an amazing feat worthy of sharing?