Loneliness

As you grow in age and watch your relatives pass on one by one and attend what memorials you can for relatives and friends that live close enough to you, loneliness often sets in as all the friendly faces pass away one by one.

It's good to enjoy what you can of you life up until about 40 because by 50 most people you knew growing up (more than 20 or 30 years older than you) will be gone. So, learning to deal with the world changing like this is what it is like to live into old age.

Loneliness for all your friends and relatives now passed away is likely one of the hardest things to deal with as you get older.

I visited my cousin this weekend and realized that even though he still works his youngest son hasn't lived here for almost 20 years now, the oldest almost 25 years. My father who was also close to my cousin as his uncle and my mother often sailed with my cousin and I on my cousin's sailboat in 1968 and after when he first got it. But now both my Mom and Dad are gone(Dad in 1985 and Mom in 2008). My cousins mother passed away the same year as my Mom and two of our peer cousins passed away also within 12 years now. So, in some ways (from our generation or older) we are the last. We have our children and he has his grandchildren but now we are the oldest of our family still alive and kicking.

Maybe understanding this is useful in helping our children live better longer lives too.