LIVING PAST YOUR EXPIRATION DATE

Did you ever think your would live to #eighty?  As a teenager, and even as I approached #retirement, I never considered the idea that I might reach that milestone, and be living with a husband who is 4 years older than me. Now, that's really old!

The day a child is born, actuaries in the insurance business give him or her an #expiration date. Currently, babies born now are expected to live until 80.

So what about those of us who were born before 1937? If born in the years before that, you were expected to leave this world at 65. So, we #octogenarians are living past our expiration date; 50% of our birth year buddies have already left us.

You have to be blessed with fairly good health to get this far.  And yet, you realize it can't go on forever. When you catch the flu and run a fever, you wonder if it will turn into pneumonia. Ten years ago, if  I came down with a virus, I felt confident that if I slurped chicken soup and waited for the fever to break, I would soon be well.  Now, the same symptoms bring on a tinge or worry that I might not make it this time.  Is that pain in my chest indigestion or a heart attack?  Should I call the  doctor  or wait a few days to see what happens?  But when all's said and done, you figure you've had a pretty good run, and so what? Just don't buy green bananas.