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 Canadians are living much, much longer than they used to. In fact, octogenarians are the country’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. While there is good material about old age written by health-care professionals for other professionals, and popular non-fiction to inspire the recently retired, there is virtually nothing written at the non-professional level for the oldest of the old. Or for their families and caregivers. This book is a freewheeling, down-to-earth inside 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 a retirement location among the options of independent living, retirement residences and nursing homes
• 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 making end-of-life arrangements

When the situation of elderly Canadians does get public attention, as it has during the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus is on what can go wrong. Well Aged expands the 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.