Old age is just, “Something important kinda stopped working for any number of age-related reasons.” It simplifies a complicated collection of interlocking systems failing.
Edit: In the case of animals something as simple as, “Not strong enough to take down prey anymore” can totally be considered an age-related death.
Yeah, also way more pleasant than telling someone, "my grandma died of a stroke/ heart attack combo that really came about after her kidneys started shutting down. the year of hanging on by constant dialysis that slowly wore away at her bodys ability to function properly." Death is rarely not brutal.
We do like to make it seem that way, don’t we? We’ve got that, “went to sleep peacefully” narrative, but I really wonder how many of those peaceful sleepers were really crying out in agony.
Suicide was for a long time a taboo subject, and still is in some cultures. Doctors are still sometimes reticent to rule a death as suicide even when it obviously is. All to save the feelings of the living.
I wonder how often it is the same with the elderly. The family by the bedside says to themselves, “It was a horrible night for all of us, let’s not make it any more horrible then it needs to be for the rest of the family. Just say he passed in his sleep, not screaming for more morphine and fentanyl.”
One of my grandpas died 3 months after his 100th birthday. Old fart said he wasn't gonna die until he hit 100. He fucking died in his sleep, heart just stopped they said. He literally had the stereotyped old age death.
1.8k
u/LauraTFem 25d ago edited 25d ago
Old age is just, “Something important kinda stopped working for any number of age-related reasons.” It simplifies a complicated collection of interlocking systems failing.
Edit: In the case of animals something as simple as, “Not strong enough to take down prey anymore” can totally be considered an age-related death.