Originally Posted by La Texican
Somebody wrote "growing old gifted" but I don't remember why I first read it so I can't recall who wrote it.  I found it again by googling "gifted + old age".  It mused on about how gifted elderly people can observe the end of life without letting their ego distort their reality.  It seems the writer is saying she still has no one to "let loose" with at age 87 since elderly are age-segregated and fellow elderly are trying to tune out reality.  
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/argrowold.pdf
Now I think, will I have inherited Alzheimer's from my family and still live "with my eyes wide open" in my last years?  I worry about the strangest things, so they say.  I'm not worrying about it, I just thought about it a little.  Glad I didn't say that one out loud.  "Hey, who is that actors name who plays that girl in that one movie?". Yeah, I should say something like that.

Originally Posted by 87 yr old & gifted
There’s no definition of where I am in life now. It’s beyond old—and I can’t write about it because I can’t define it. I’m saying goodbye to the last stage that’s definable. I have never felt this way before. I’m also feeling that there isn’t anybody who can identify with this. The other old people I know are either senile or too firmly rooted in the concrete! I’m living in a twilight world. There is a lack of definition. In younger years, you can get through these times by considering your future, but in old age, there is no more future to imagine. How can you live without the future? 

Actually, this is the one situation where practicing law comes in *very* handy.

I recall one 80+ year old gentleman who was always wandering the corridors of the law library of the law firm where I worked. He still practiced law part-time. He was entertaining.

Anyhow, Oliver Wendell Holmes was on the Supreme Court until he was 90.

Also, you can be a professor when you are 100+. I knew one guy who was still working then. He finally retired at 103 because his eyesight was just too bad. Granted, he was doing it for fun, but still. I sometimes hung out with him at social events.

You can be 87 and still have 15 years of your career ahead of you.