More power to you, Mr Murdoch. You proved age is just a number

The other day, at work, we were having a discussion - a morbid one, if you ask me - on mortality. The point of reference was the "assisted suicide" (at the 'suicide clinic' in Switzerland) of one Gill Pharaoh, who made headlines in the United Kingdom a few months ago, alongside frenzied media speculation on the lack of palliative care in the country, which was, allegedly, leading to elders toying with the idea of taking their lives.
Strangely, 75-year-old Gill's wasn't really a case in point for the (reportedly) sorry state of healthcare in the UK. She used to be a palliative caregiver for the most part of her life, and she'd even authored a couple of books on the subject. She'd witnessed - first-hand - the suffering older people have to undergo. Ageing, she says in her last blog (yes, she wrote a farewell blog, in which she explained her decision. also detailing the last meal/the last walk she shared with her partner), is an awful, awful thing. She didn't want to live long enough to experience the "decline". "I have looked after people who are old, on and off, all my life," she wrote. "I have always said, 'I am not getting old. I do not think old age is fun.' I know that I have gone just over the hill now. It is not going to start getting better. I do not want people to remember me as a sort of old lady hobbling up the road with a trolley."
So, she called it a day even though she was perfectly healthy.
Elsewhere, there are debates unfolding on whether one should try and prolong the inevitable: 70 seems to be the rounded number a lot of folks are labelling "the perfect time" to put your affairs in order. Why stretch your lifespan by doing stuff like eating healthy and working out daily?
I'm rather gobsmacked. My father turned 70 sometime back. To my mind, he's living out the best time of his life: healthy (without trying too hard to be healthy that is), happy and independent. He's fitter than I am. He walks faster than I do. He's a far less finicky eater than I am (he loves his desserts, though his wife scolds him each time he goes over desired limits - which is quite often). He had a tooth surgery a couple of months ago: he jumped into his car and drove off to the clinic. and drove himself back when it got over. Whenever I land at the Calcutta airport, and he meets me at the arrival area, he manfully whisks my (usually huge) suitcase into his car's boot, while I struggle to get my tiny carry-bag out of the trolley and onto the backseat. His closest friends, who are my friends too, manage to have a blast when they catch up for a round of chatter - and I'm talking about his friends just so my dad doesn't come across as being a rarity.
I don't think my dad thinks it's downhill for him from now on. Not yet. Let him hold his horses, I say.
But the news item that pleased me the most in recent times was the one on media tycoon Rupert Murdoch planning to get married (yes, right, for the fourth time) - at the age of 84 - to Jerry Hall, who is 25 years younger than him. It's not just that life seems to lob everyone a chance once in a while to make things right; I'm also thrilled that Mr Murdoch has defied the ageist notion of sunset years being all about sitting on a reclining chair, waiting for life to sign itself out. At a newsroom meeting, where the story of Murdoch's engagement to the long-legged Jerry was being discussed, many of those gathered rolled their eyes in disbelief. How can a man who should be acting all great-grandfatherly be getting hitched?
I say more power to you, Mr Murdoch. You proved age is just a number.
- sushmita@khaleejtimes.com