Has the role of caregiver affected your view of your own aging?

I too think 80 is about the limit and fear dementia more than anything. We have three (82,87 and 88) parents between us and it is not pretty. My dear mother now 82 and in a NH told me thirty years ago that if something ever happened to her to just find a nice home and let them do their work, not to disrupt or destroy my life. Well, she had a stroke a bad one and the docs despite a DNR brought her back so she has had 3 years of hell on earth. I want no part of a life like that and do the best I can to eat well and stay active, but honestly taking care of the FIL and then sometimes my dad has not made for a happy life for me. I have pared down the stuff after moving 28,000 pounds of my parents stuff to another state and now having to tackle the FIL's over stuffed condo. My affairs are in order and hopefully I will do the swan song with more grace than my elders. I hope to move in the next few years to a rural location with a smaller home and lots of gardening space if I'm lucky I will die in the garden where I am most a peace. I truly hope that by the time I am 80 we will have figured out how to keep the mind as alive as we have the ability to keep the body or that society has acknowleged that allowing people the choice to die is in fact a right if they so choose.

Getting too old is worse than dying too young!!!! Our society really needs to re-evaluate death, dying, and extended care traditions. I would much rather spend a million dollars educating a thousand children than extending the "life" of a dementia patient by a couple of years -- even If the dementia patient is me ---especially if the dementia patient is me!!!