My father passed away five years ago at the decent age of 79. With the passing of time, it becomes easier for me to consider the last years of his life.
Like many people, he was healthy up to a number of years before he died, but overnight his quality of life plummeted dreadfully.
At seventy-five, this fit man who was a daily walker (of 5 to 10 miles), suffered a heart attack and underwent an emergency triple bypass, which we hoped would lead to a reasonably rapid recovery. I looked forward to being able to walk with him again on Killiney Hill or the nearby beach, which were our favourite walks in South Dublin.
It didn’t work out that way.
Complications associated with an acute disease, diabetes, ensured his final years were not years of joy, surrounded by family and grandchildren – the type of old age we all imagine we will enjoy.
His were years of ill-health, faltering recoveries, incapacity and ultimately pain, due to poor blood circulation induced by diabetes.
As getting old is inevitable and happens quicker than we think, looking back at the end of my own Dad’s life has prompted me to look forward to the end of mine.
What will it be like? What sort of society will we live in by the time I reach my ripe old age?
How many other oldies like myself will be knocking around? Will I be in slippers, beside the fire, chatting to grandchildren, surrounded by loving family or will I be alone?
Will I be rotund, corpulent and content or will I be raging against time, trying to run marathons, looking like a hyperactive raisin in Lycra cycling like a demon up the Sally Gap in Co Wicklow, trying to prove something?
These are considerations which all of us will face in our own way at some stage in our lives.
In the past, the need to reflect on these issues was not so acute because lots of us more or less ‘dropped dead’. My grandfather dropped dead at 50-odd, when my father was 15. That was the way it was.
But this is no longer so likely as the demographics of our society change dramatically in the 21st century.
The medical difference between my father’s time and his father’s was that in my grandfather’s lifetime – the 50 years from 1900 to 1950 – life expectancy increased dramatically.
Vaccines, antibiotics and better medical care saved children from premature death and effectively treated infections. This was the case all over the western world. Once cured, people who had been sick largely returned to their normal, healthy lives without disabilities.
In my father’s adult lifetime, since the mid 1950s, increases in longevity have been achieved mainly by extending the lives of people over 60.
In 1961, there were 315,000 people aged 65 or over in the Republic of Ireland. At the 2011 census, there were 535,393, an increase of 70pc. This trend of an ever-ageing population continues today.
While the young population (0-14 years) was higher than the old population in 2011 – with 976,600 compared with 531,600 – this trend is set to change drastically in the decades ahead.
The switch-over from young to old is expected to start in 2036. This gap will move ever wider by 2046 when there could be 561,000 more older people than younger people in Ireland.
Even by 2021 (which is only seven years away) the number of elderly people in Ireland will have grown by 200,000 from the 2011 figure.
According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) projections, based on estimates of fertility and mortality rates, the population could reach 6.4 million by 2046.
The numbers over 65 will reach 1.4 million by 2046. This older group will make up 22pc of the total population, compared with 11.6pc of the population today. I will be one of them.
While the number of children at primary school age will rise by up to 100,300 by 2021, the over-80s population will rise from 128,000 in 2011 to between 470,000 and 484,000 in 2046. In Ireland, by 2046 there could be up to more than half a million older people than younger people.
Male life expectancy has increased from 57.4 years in 1926 to 77.9 years in 2010, a gain of 20.5 years over the 84-year period; while females have seen a gain of 24.8 years – from 57.9 to 82.7.
This stretching out of life will continue as so much of modern medicine is focused on prolonging our time here.
There are all sorts of new genetic advances that will come on the market in the next few years, all of which are aimed at retarding the ageing process.
However, what if we aren’t really slowing the ageing process so much as slowing down the dying process?
And what will be the purpose of that? And at what stage do we say stop?
Typically, economics columns, when discussing the elderly, refer to the financial costs of an ageing population, about pensions and whether enough money has been set aside to provide for the old.
Economics conferences on demography host discussions about whether we should encourage emigration to supplement our falling population.
Yet over the coming years, we will realise that these concerns are the least of our worries.
The consequences of slowing down the dying process will lead to some of the most pressing moral dilemmas faced by our society – where the right to die will become as contentious as the right to life.
Ping
David,
I am not sure which is troubling me more… 1. that you have me thinking about dying first thing on a Thursday morning or your obsession with men in lycra…
Leave us cyclists alone :)
Eddie
Agenda 21, Depop….nice
Life Cycle Many who have lost their own Dads can understand the moments as described by David and remember their experiences and those final moments and all of it will always seem like yesterday no matter how many years ago it happened.For others they still do not understand . Looking into tomorrow will be a new science of living and quiet frankly no one knows yet . Drugs and new discoveries make the aging process the next ‘new item’ everyone wants to be .Rights to life and to death will be the other end of the scale. New societal practices… Read more »
Many years ago after my parents died I adopted a Granny in France and made her lifestyle very pleasant and she empowered me to own her home .She died 5 years ago aged 85 . This is a recognised legal process well known in France . Encouraged by this new experience I repeated the same process but this time a granny and grand dad and he died four years ago .This granny is now 88 and I am meeting her tomorrow morning . Its magic the experience I share with her .She is a former opera singer and sang for… Read more »
Some truths maybe here but so many massive assumptions too. Given on Monday David was saying it’s impossible to really predict how the economy might turn because of how unpredictable we are as a species, today he has predicted the family planning habits of 5 million people for the next 40 years! Some concerning points too. If “Economics conferences on demography host discussions about whether we should encourage emigration to supplement our falling population.”, and Ireland is a minute country in the context of the western world, and all western countries are experiencing similar population changes, where do these economics… Read more »
My mother died earlier this year, less than a year after my father. They both lived to be “a good age”, into their late eighties, in fairly good health, but, as with David’s father, their last few years were very difficult, and I am still distraught at times just at the thought of my father’s incapacitating illness, not to mention his and my mother’s subsequent deaths. We tried to do everything we could for them, and to allow them maintain as much independence and dignity in their own home as possible, with our care, with much additional help from the… Read more »
Don’t knock the rise of the MAMILs (Middle Aged Men In Lycra). I was chatting to a girl at a wedding recently. She was in her thirties but heavily involved with her local golf club. This is hardly a large sample set, but she said that golf clubs are struggling. The recession didn’t help obviously, but in addition most of their members are old, not a lot of young members. She put it down to the mid-life crisis and the rise of the MAMILs. Traditionally this class of people used to take up golf, now it is cycling. They are… Read more »
Try 1st child at 48!
*A descent during air travel is any portion where an aircraft decreases altitude, and is the opposite of an ascent or climb*
When you travel a lot, you realise immediately when the engine power is adjusted and the angle of the aircraft is changed to ca. 3 degrees angled downward.
Today is a bright Autumn day and that’s how it seems.
http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/US20120232725A1/US20120232725A1-20120913-D00000.png
Right to Work in Life Today I was in Mc Carthys Pub in Monaco and had a very interesting conversation with a Yorkie who is resident there .I learned that it is impossible to get a job in Monaco .Firstly The Monagasques Authorities ignore ,as do the French, the EU employment laws .Secondly they employ natives first following then the qualified residents and then those in the outside environments and finally normal people have an opportunity.Natives and that means ‘electorates’ always are given the first opportunity in Monaco and France . And in Ireland the normal people are the native… Read more »
Well Dorothy, seems like your analogy touches down, gets re-serviced, and takes off for another flight.
Life is like that with its ups and downs. There are many flights any of which could result in a crash but we all fly anyway.
Hopefully the final flight is as exhilarating as the first culminating in a gentle tow to the final hanger.
“Will I be rotund, corpulent and content?” If I am rotund and corpulent I will not be content. It will be a signal that I have eaten the wrong food and not exercised. It is now well known that exercise cures 95% of what ails you. Unfortunately a combination of agribusiness and pharmaceuticals are doing us in. For instance in the case of using aspartame rather than sugar the result is worse than using sugar. Diet pop or diet anything is bad for your health. Low fat is bad for your health. Natural fats are good for you, manufactured fats… Read more »
Have you ever wondered how Ireland’s population pre-famine grew to close to 9 million. Somewhere I read the statement that the in the early 1800’s the children of Ireland were the healthiest in Europe. This notwithstanding that most were peasant families living 3 generations or more to a cottage while the ruling classes exported all kinds of foodstuffs such as grain and meats. It seems that organic potatoes and milk provide just about all that is necessary for a full healthy diet. combined with other vegetable and herbs the population flourished. https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=1800's%20irish%20food%20potatoes%20and%20milk In a modern society Ireland can easily feed… Read more »
Having read quite a few articles on the subject of life expectancy, mostly written by alternative thinking doctors, scientists and nutritionists, I no longer buy the argument that we are really living longer. In fact I would go so far as to call it propaganda, spun by a medical establishment who feel the need justify expensive procedures and Big Pharma that just want to sell you more pills. Yes it is true that average life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 150 years, but it is not so straight forward. Most of this increase is due to the dramatic… Read more »
I’ll post this again
It needs you all to view it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQv-sdMCClQ
Q: but where do we ‘go’ when we die ? A: back to the same ‘place’ you ‘were’ before you were born “I find it helps to see life as being like a book, just as a book is bounded by it’s covers – by beginning and end , so our lives are bounded by birth and death ,and even though a book is limited by beginning and end, it can encompass distant landscapes, exotic figures, fantastic adventures ,and even though a book is limited by beginning and end, the characters within it, know, no, horizons. They only know the… Read more »
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-20/anti-petrodollar-ceo-french-energy-giant-total-dies-freak-plane-crash-moscow
Pres of Total went the way of Saddam and Qaddafi after he said Total oil could sell in Euros and not necessarily Petro Dollars.
If you expect to live to a ripe old age do not diss the Dollar
Makes sense not to diss the dollar so. Do you see oil heading towards $50 a barrel as suggested by some analysts and why would opec allow it to fall to that level?
Another aspect that has to be strongly considered here are dysfunctional health care systems and their massive impact on increasing socioeconomic inequalities.
Will your life end battling an inflationary depression? A rapidly expanding money supply, exponential increasing debt loads with the economy debt saturated and failing. Yes death is the least of my concerns, it is living I am concerned with.
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/10/23_Mauldin_-_World_Headed_For_Unprecedented_Volatility_%26_Chaos.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-24/putin-accuses-u-s-of-blackmail-says-global-order-weakening.html
The Russian people rally around their leader as the reverse happens to Obama!
will you accept payment in cold hard cash, real money.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/paying-people-their-worth/1431004.html
government gets more authoritarian with every excuse. Canada under lockdown??
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/24/cana-o24.html?view=article_mobile
Posted at Lemetropolecafe.com Swiss election Hi Bill The only way the Swiss referendum will pass is if the Swiss people insist on paper ballots. Numerous examples abound that the machines are pre -programmed to produce the results desired by the government. Recall Chile in the late 70s early 80s when the government there exposed the CIA;s attempted fraud to overthrow the government via Diebold. The only way anyone in the world can overthrow these criminals is by paper ballots. I am always amazed by the elites protestations that this would delay the results for days or weeks. So What? We… Read more »
In Tuam there were 800 babes and children who never had the chance to reach any adult age at all. It is suspected that they were abused and murdered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhirLohgDRc
Tortured and raped by pedophiles. Pedophiles in high office in church and state. This is more important than Kilkenomics.
The common law movement is on the move and expanding. This will be a way to remove the deviant politicians and banksters.
Communism is the antithesis of common law. common law is a freeman’s law with a deep history lost and forgotten by many. communism is slavery wrapped in savory phrases and slogans.
http://www.savethemales.ca/160303.html
IMO age in respect to economy is stuck in the Victorian times.
What we need is but to context age in respect to leisure not employment.
Leisure coupled with enterprise a new paradigm.