Today is my birthday. I am 48 years old.
Voltur | 2026-08-19
I reflect a lot about aging and end of life, and what that means for the human experience. For most folks like me, the average life expectancy is in the neighborhood of 75 years, assuming you take reasonable care of yourself. It's depending on a variety of things, like region, financial capability, genetic disposition, etc.… if you're lucky, you'll live to whatever your estimated expectancy will be, dodging the non-natural things like car accidents. If you're really, REALLY lucky, you'll make it a touch longer, especially if you take extra care of yourself. The math is fuzzy and nowhere near exact, but the sentiment is sound.
For me that's about 27 years, hopefully a touch longer as I've taken an interest in my health and fitness. No guarantees, but that means, if I'm lucky, I'll have 27 more summers. 27 more valentines day dinners with my beautiful wife. 27 more Christmas mornings.
27 more birthdays.
It makes you wonder, how many of those are going to be while I'm healthy enough to enjoy them? At the end of life, most folks struggle with mobility and cognitive ability. So, will I actually see and enjoy 27 summers if I'm bed ridden or in steep cognitive decline? Or will it be more like 20?
That's just the human condition. I'm not mad at it.
My mom is 73. She has dementia. She hasn't taken care of herself, and I suspect is held together mostly by dissatisfaction and orneriness. She's already been lucky enough not to succumb to an unnatural death, thankfully, but she's got maybe 5 or so years left, statistically speaking. Maybe even 10 if she's REALLY, REALLY lucky. It's hard to put a number on the final quality of life for her upcoming years. We have her in a home where she gets immediate medical care if something goes wrong and gets served healthy meals, despite her cultural love of fast food, and is surrounded by other people (that she probably hates).
If we're both really lucky, and I mean really lucky, I'll only ever hear my mom tell me "Happy Birthday!" 10 more times in my life.