How Older Folks Expose Our Weirdness Around Aging And Death
Beloved American actress and national treasure, Betty White is trending, but don’t be alarmed! She hasn’t “croaked,” as a user on Twitter eagerly confirmed. We go through this interesting ritual around this time every year. And while birthdays are typically a joyous occasion and the perfect opportunity to shower love and praises, things can get downright ornery when you’re a culturally-renowned celebrity of a certain age.
Betty White just turned 98, which is an amazing feat when you consider the grim statistics that confirm how the United States lags far behind in average life expectancy compared to other western countries.
There’s also the personal take of how our only surviving “Golden Girl” was born the same year as my late maternal grandfather who sadly passed away almost forty years ago.
I often imagine what it would’ve been like if he had stuck around a lot longer, but as I get older, I have come to respect the very straightforward analogy of how we’re all born to die.
Some of us are lucky enough to reach the age bracket that places us on never-ending death watch, and others are unfortunately denied the honor of maturing past prime years of youthful vigor, which assigns the romanticized status of “forever young.”
