That’s true, I have watched friends get cut away on for years with diabetes, and cancer is not a very nice way to go....the year I retired , 5 fellow employees and friends died of cancer. It was the reason I left my job....
My mom died Feb 8th, on a ventilator ( before they started counting covid). I don’t think she had it, but she would have been listed as a covid death under today rules. So I have a personal attachment to deaths at this time.
I was with her as they poked needles everywhere, I had left her about midnight, but couldn’t sleep so at 4 am I went back to ICU. She has so exhausted, and I took her hand and told her , “ Mom you need to get some rest, you have not closed your eyes for 2 day”. She pasted away at that moment, they restarted her and asked what she would want them to do... and I said she made it clear in her medical directive, when there is no hope....let her go.
They pulled the vent tube and I held her till she was gone.
I understand exactly how it is.......it sucks!
Now on the flip side....
Like you I had worked, saved, and planned for life after retirement. I have only so many years myself. If I got it, the odds are I will survive, even though I have asthma, to fat, 64 yo, and high blood pressure.....
I don’t like this virus, but it’s just one of a million ways that could shorten my life.
House fire, falling of the roof, heart attack packing elk, boat sinks, cancer, car wreck....and the list goes on....
What my biggest fear is, planning and working my whole life to this moment and then being in lock down..... especially when the stats are not correct, and the model were so very wrong.
I am not letting the fear of a virus, take away everything I have planned and worked for.......just can’t do it.
I will say for to those younger folks.....it doesn’t get better, the golden years are not that golden..... when I was poor and raising kids, those were the best years of my life. Don’t waste your years thinking tomorrow will be better.
Today I have no debt, nice place, good neighbors, best boat I ever had, and a good measure of health.
Yet, I didn’t anticipate the world going to *****, and I would give up the next 20 years for 5 years when I had rusty guns, a crappy 2 stroke, and a measure of control in my life.
I wish someone would have told me that....