The Honest Truth About Being This Close to 90

First of all, don't take advice about aging from anyone who hasn't lived it.

On a particularly bad day, as I drove into my apartment complex, I had to pull over and capture this. It’s those exquisite little things that keep me going.

As sunny as I appear to be often enough to keep you people reading, I have those days when everything seems to suck. They don’t come often, happy to say, but they do come and why wouldn’t they? As I’ve told you often enough to make you sick of hearing it, I’m 88 years old. That’s old. If it makes me cranky now and then, well, nobody’s perfect.

The truth is, being this old puts fears into my head that were never there when I was younger. Every little creak and groan makes me wonder if this is it. Is this the one that’s going to kill me? Because something will, sure as I’m sitting here. Every day is a miracle. Every day is a crap shoot. I’m not supposed to live this long. (See below.)

But I want to.

But my body is turning against me. There’s no denying it. It’s always something. Every day this week but Tuesday I was doing something medical. I hate that. I wish I had better control over what this old body does. I guess it thinks it’s enough that it’s allowing me to keep my brain. I’m trying not to seem ungrateful, lest it decides to take that, too.

I’m a little wary of those stories of old women living to be 100 who still have their own teeth, who still churn their own butter, who never take medicine outside of what they can forage in the woods yet rarely suffer more than a common cold, and who keep their friends and families enchanted with stories of the olden days in such a manner they’ll never be alone. If they exist I’ll bet you can count them on one hand.

Maybe that’s just jealousy talking.

But the thousands of articles appearing every year about the secrets of aging, the reasons for aging, the remedies for aging, the upsides of aging, and the downsides of aging, all written by people who haven’t aged and write with the confidence of someone who won’t be aging for a long, long time—they make me even more wary.

Everyone thinks they know everything about aging, and the billion-dollar industries forming around it suggests there are always willing suckers who want to believe someone, at last, has figured it out.

So let me challenge anything you’ve read before by someone who is not old and has no clue about any of it. (Not that you’re going to pay me. Are you?)

Here’s a fact, and it’s a big one: Nobody can explain aging because no two people are likely to ever age the same. In 2023, the last data available, the average female life expectancy was 81.1 years, while average male life expectancy was 75.8 years. (Sorry, men, I’m just the messenger here.)

So I’ve lived seven years past my expectancy, and nothing says I’m not going to live any longer, even though I’m on chemo right now and food tastes like crap and I’m sleeping roughly 4 or 5 hours a night. (It’s 7 AM and I’ve been up for 2 1/2 hours, so this may sound a bit cranky.)

Nearly everyone who meets me or knows me wants to tell me how great they think I am. For 88. Because apparently I don’t look, sound, or act like an 88-year-old. Whatever that might be. As much as I appreciate it—and I do—I know there are many people my age and older who live lives outside of nursing homes or care facilities, who aren’t burdens to their families, who still contribute in many ways to society and to their own well-being.

Whenever I hear about them or read about them, I make a little checkmark in the air. And those checkmarks add up. There are more of us than you might think. The industry on aging wishes there weren’t, but it’s not all doom and gloom or better eating or exercise habits for us old people. Sometimes it’s pure stubbornness. We’re just not ready to curl up and die.

We’re living longer. That’s a fact. According to a Pew Research story, The US centenarian population, in 2024 numbers, is around 101,000, compared to 2300 in 1950, when the government first began counting 100-year-olds. In the last three decades alone, the centenarian numbers have tripled. Those living to be 100 are expected to quadruple in number by 2054.

But I keep finding articles about why we shouldn’t want to live to be 100. I’m assuming, because I usually just skim those pieces, it’s because it can only be downhill and people who live to be 100 often don’t even know they’ve done it. Or they’re so miserable they’ve been wishing to just die. Poor things, they keep on living.

So when I find those pieces about octogenarians and nonagenarians and centenarians living later lives full of laughter and wonderment, often still walking and sometimes even driving, but also having gone through the usual medical and familial shit, the hard times, those moments in life that take guts and courage and oceans of tears, I think, analyze THAT, you morons. Find a name for THEM, why don’t you?

Because you can’t.

It’s no secret that I plan on living to be 100. I may have even said it here. Of course I want to still be mainly healthy and mainly active and not be a burden, still marveling at Cardinal couples at my birdfeeder against a backdrop of snow. Or maybe even driving to wherever I want to go. By myself. That’s always fun.

Maybe even planning a trip to Italy, to that small village in Abruzzo where my grandmother’s people practically filled the place. Maybe they lived long lives, too.

And maybe I’ll still be writing this blog. That would be amazing! We should plan on it. Those of you who are still around. 😏

Happy Holidays from my house to yours

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Constant Commoner revolves around my thoughts as a woman who has aged and grown and learned by a process that feels miraculous considering I have no formal education or unique abilities. We the people are all commoners. We believe based on our own past and our own feelings. We choose a path we can live with and if we’re lucky we get to share our lives with people who care, who understand.

That’s what I aim to do here. I want to build a community where anyone can come and sit on our porch and grow along with the rest of us.

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