For me the key word is “opportunity”.
Opportunity to:
grow in love and wisdom;learn from past mistakes and make new ones;learn to deal with loneliness, grief,loss; experience new wonders and pleasures in singing, dancing, writing and sharing it with others;have moments of quite reflection and raucous celebration; touch, feel, sense,remember; be grateful for what remains of my ability to remember, to smell, to see; appreciate my gifts as well as dwell on my faults; let go of the shackles of cnfusion and doubt that sometimes carries the day; to see the goodness in myself and others that I sometimes fail to notice; not be concerned with the answer to the question “why”
I am old, not “getting”older, closer to 85 than 84. I am soon to reach that statistical category that the U.S. government labels “the oldest old” I am grateful for that too.