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Ageing & Growing Old

Are you growing older?

  • Yes, I am

    Votes: 82 61.7%

  • No, I'm getting younger

    Votes: 28 21.1%

  • Sorry, I don't understand the question

    Votes: 16 12.0%

  • I'm a Mod; I think adding silly polls to chat threads is pointless

    Votes: 7 5.3%
  • Total voters
    133
Floyd1 said:
On news reports they'll often say things like a grandfather was hit by a youth in an altercation today and I think of an old-guy, but of course he could only be in his 40s (and may well have started the incident anyway).
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Grannies are even worse,

hells-grannies-monty-python.gif
 
escargot said:
Like me, with my four? Luckily, I can retain your esteem because one died leaving me with the regulation three. Phew.
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Scargy I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. I remember reading a post of yours which seemed to suggest that you'd suffered such a bereavement, surely one of the most painful, but hadn't liked to ask. :( In any case I wouldn't have expected you or anyone else to actually care what I think!

So a bit of explaination for my stance on the matter. I grew up really, really wanting a big family as I only had one sister and was quite frankly jealous of friends who had lots of siblings. I spent hours as a child dreaming of my future children. It's what I did to escape my bad tempered mum; going into my imagination to escape her constant criticism.

Then one day I heard about the 'population explosion' and as I'd always been aware of the wider world away from my small village I took it very seriously and realised that I had to relinguish this dream and went through a great deal of depression. I mean really deep depression far more than being got down by my mother's attitude. Then I heard that replacement level was 2 point something or other so that's when I came up with the number three.

In the event mother nature decreed that, although I had no trouble conceiving, all my babies would be either still born or miscarried. The one live birth baby born fit and healthy (albeit 3 weeks early after a months bedrest) and thriving died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at 7 weeks.* I lost 6 altogether.

Luckily I was able to adopt 2 boys so did have the motherhood experience. However I can't begin to tell you how deeply distressed it has made me over the years to come across so many woman who have said things like 'I never really wanted children but then I had one and I so enjoyed the experience that I went on to have 3 or 4 more I just loved being pregnant and having a new born in my arms'. Pure self indulgence I don't understand how they thought it was ok to populate the world with so many of their offspring particularly the ones who go on to brag about their environmental credentials.

As most of these women have been good friends /collegues I've just had to grin and bear it and keep my true feelings to myself, after all can I put my hand on my heart and say that if my womb had been more cooperative I wouldn't have also indulged? I can't of course answer that who knows how different any of our lives would have turned out with a tweek here and there it's impossible to know.

Privately calling friends 'reproductively incontinent' is not the worst thing I've ever done. After I'd suffered 2 still births and 2 miscarriages I was at a Christmas party and on telling someone the sorry tale in response to 'have you got any children?' I added

'I just don't understand it how can any old bit of riff raff from the street just be having babies so easily?'.

All very well but this was a Labour Party do, yes a gathering of socialists dear oh dear!! Talk about wrong comment wrong time. I was in huge trouble from my husband ... ooops!!

So there you have it and yes I am aware only too well that far worse things have happened to other people. I dealt with it as the situation developed but having arrived at old age it seems to have caught up with me so sorry for sounding off!

*I have started telling the story of all the coincidences that happened around this event somewhere on here and one day I'll finish it, :)
 
I have never wanted kids. I did think early on, that I might adopt, but didn't.

The only sadness that I had to reconcile was when I actually realized that I wouldn't be a grandmother. I loved my maternal grandmother.

Add on: it was just today that I was talking to a coworker who is also childless, by choice. She revealed that she had had a miscarriage once.

Miscarriages are rarely talked about or recognized by society as a whole. People have lost someone and grieve, but society does not recognize the loss as they would a death of a living person. People who have gone through a miscarriage don't even get time from work, as they would if they had a family member die.

It is sad that many people feel they cannot talk about this grief and loss. It is sad that society doesn't want to recognize this either.
 
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brownmane said:
I have never wanted kids. I did think early on, that I might adopt, but didn't.

The only sadness that I had to reconcile was when I actually realized that I wouldn't be a grandmother. I loved my maternal grandmother.

Add on: it was just today that I was talking to a coworker who is also childless, by choice. She revealed that she had had a miscarriage once.

Miscarriages are rarely talked about or recognized by society as a whole. People have lost someone and grieve, but society does not recognize the loss as they would a death of a living person. People who have gone through a miscarriage don't even get time from work, as they would if they had a family member die.

It is sad that many people feel they cannot talk about this grief and loss. It is sad that society doesn't want to recognize this either.
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I've never wanted kids either and when a kid I didn't want to be part of my family either.
 
The thing is growing up in the fifties, rural working class with no other role models it was all to easy to fall for the 'motherhood' ambition. Back in the early 90s I actually met a bloke who sheepishly admitted that when he was a baby he'd been one of the models in the Cow and Gate baby milk adverts. I gave him a right telling off for being such a dear little photogenic infant, giving me a false idea and luring me into the wrong life choices!! (Tongue in cheek of course lol)
 
I've written before about being about 6 and deciding i could be a better teacher than I had.
Well I always wanted children of my own and decided that I would be better at it than my Mother. I had 3 and they seem to like me well enough.
 
I attended a 'you're over 50, we can help you out if you've got health problems' meeting yesterday. I have health issues and I'm working on those. There was a bloke called Mark who was rocking a santa beard who was a bit cross about age discrimination. He had a good point and I might have got him a night porter job because he's ex security.
 
brownmane said:
It is sad that many people feel they cannot talk about this grief and loss. It is sad that society doesn't want to recognize this either.
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I think it's partly to do with our society in general doesn't know how to deal with other peoples grief at any time let alone when it comes to pregnancy and neonatal loss.

People were sympathetic but ultimately it felt as if they thought that what happened was akin to I'd been called in for an interview but I hadn't got the job ... such a shame but there we are forget it and move on. Lucky you are a strong person/couple and other such toxic positivity remarks. Yes I knew they meant well but it was a bit more than that, please can I be weak for a bit?

The best condolence card I ever received said simply 'I wept for you'. Perfect it gave me permission to weep as well and not have to pretend to be coping!

I think things are better now than they used to be. but back then not even the midwives knew how to deal with it very well. Afterwards I was told that the young midwives on duty didn't know how to deal with a still birth but it wasn't exactly fun to be left totally on my own for the first birth. Every time they refused to let me see the baby or even tell me the sex, told me it was for the best if I didn't know. By the last one I did insist on seeing him although the midwives were reluctant. This was in 1980. I think nowadays they give you plenty of time to say good bye and let you take footprints and what not.
 
Floyd1 said:
And why 12 inches long? Who needs that length?
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Floyd, Floyd, Floyd sigh what can I say? Back in secondary school one of the lads was nick named by the others 'Six and a half' but they wouldn't tell us girls why ha!ha!. Of course we worked it out! I'm going to start calling you that from now on as I suspect it's nearer the truth. You are such a scallywag!
 
Sollywos said:
Floyd, Floyd, Floyd sigh what can I say? Back in secondary school one of the lads was nick named by the others 'Six and a half' but they wouldn't tell us girls why ha!ha!. Of course we worked it out! I'm going to start calling you that from now on as I suspect it's nearer the truth. You are such a scallywag!
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6½ is quite respectable let me tell you.

OK you’re not going to win any awards but nevertheless..
 
Floyd1 said:
Not in my case;
always getting it stuck/caught in things - zips, doors, other men's wives/girlfriends...............................
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As I said upthread ... you are nothing but a Scallywag! I'm going to be sending your wife a good pair of nutcrackers for Christmas!
 
I have always heard “ one can never go back” or “one can never return”.

I did my childhood in Nashville but lived my adult life 40 miles south of Nashville.

This past weekend I went back to Nashville and told my wife it was stressful.

The names of streets have been changed, houses have been destroyed, and other buildings built, landmarks were different or nonexistent, and my high school was rebuilt in a more populated area.

Time waits for no one !
 
Iris said:
The Primary school where I went is now a housing estate.
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Quite a number of years ago, I returned to where I used to live, from two years old up to twenty one years old, which was in South London (North Kent) along with my younger Sister (recently deceased).

Noticeable changes were that the at one time gardens that people took some pride in had been converted into hard-core car parks with several cars parked in front of the houses.

The primary school was mostly unchanged - apart from the sleeping garden, the garden that was purposely laid out with a stone mermaid I believe over a fountain, that's where we were meant to sleep in the open in the afternoons, but that had been swept away and was, sadly, no more.

Tall trees that once grew proudly on the little grassed greens had gone; a green park was changed into places for sports i.e. tarmacked, the red telephone box that used to be a landmark had gone - only rubble left marking the spot.

Purely by chance as we approached the house where we once lived, a young woman in a white wedding dress was just about to enter the house - so we informed her that we once used to live there, whereas she was just about to start her new life living there. . . that seemed really strange to both of us, and to her.

She was obviously 'bowled over' as she opened the front door, which was totally different to the one we recalled, we left her and wished her well in her new life.

As we walked away, we both had vivid 'living memories' of what life for us was like that had gone before and realised that she had no knowledge of all that had been long before. . . the four black rats that had made a nest-hole underneath one side of the Anderson shelter, and scratched and run through the walls at night-time when we were trying to sleep yet laying there absolutely terrified, so many things now just a memories - some good, a lot not so, all were oblivious to the young bride and rightly so.

This was the place where I'd spent my childhood, along with my paralysed Grandad - a once tall proud man partially disabled from his 1st world war encounters - then being electrocuted when working on the relaying of the electricity cabling in bombed out London when somebody threw a live switch, which had then electrocuted him, and now was reliant on my parents to look after his every need turning him into an angry, and sometimes fearful totally crippled man to be around at my young age.

It all has place in my memory ~ including the vivid memory of time and place where I was confronted one night with seeing a flying saucer which had slowly passed over the house one night as I looked out of my window,
remembering the youngish couple walking along the street were stopped in their tracks when they reacted to it by acting in a total panic.
"Oh yes, those were the days alright!"
 
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Sid,

What an interesting reply.

Same for me, the field I saw my first UFO is now a huge housing development.

I never realized so much time has past until my older daughter celebrated her 50th birthday and that hit me funny.
 
I visit my first adult home on google maps streetview. I meander down the streets. Some change. There was a schoolyard and walkway directly across from the house which no longer exists.

I really enjoy streetview. I walked around the area that I eventually stayed in, when I travelled to New Orleans, and picked out places that I could walk to from my hotel. I did this when I was planning my trip to Quebec City and found a patisserie right around the corner of a hotel, which I subsequently booked.
 
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