Well Aged: Making the Most of Your Platinum Years

Finding happiness at 80+, from the perspective of an octogenarian.

Author Ralph Milton wants readers to know that old age is not a disease circling the world ready to pounce on anyone over eighty. Many―maybe even most―old people say they are happier and more contented than they have ever been. And that’s good news because we are living much, much longer than we used to. In fact, seniors are North America’s fastest growing demographic. To quote the author, “Society has never had to deal with such a huge bunch of old people.”

To address this societal shift, Well Aged offers a candid, useful and entertaining insider’s take on life among the old-old. Not the recently retired who are enjoying Arizona winters and unlimited golf, but those in their last years, usually in the eighty- to one-hundred-year-old bracket. This book is a lively and candid look at what it’s really like to be old, written by someone living the experience, and sprinkled liberally with humour.

Topics include:

• Identity and independence
• Choosing where to live
• Personal health needs and priorities
• Community support, friendships and recreation
• Spirituality and religion
• Intimacy, companionship and sexuality
• Loneliness, depression and frailty
• Leaving a legacy and end-of-life arrangements

When the subject of the elderly does get public attention, as it has during the covid-19 pandemic, the focus is usually on what can go wrong. Well Aged expands this conversation around aging, and it is a must-read for anyone who needs to put out their birthday cake with a fire extinguisher―as well as those who love and care for them.

Ralph Milton was publisher of Wood Lake Books from 1980 to 2000. He has written hundreds of magazine articles and is the author of over twenty books. He holds two honorary doctorates (Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Sacred Letters). Milton lives in Kelowna, BC, with Beverley, his wife of 63 years.