Really? The GOLDEN YEARS?

On balance, I would say that when you're spending as much time, or even more, going to the funerals of family members and friends than you are attending the weddings and christenings and graduations of their children and your own, it gets a bit difficult to think of this time of life as the golden years.  And even more telling is having the mindset of youth restrained in a body that can't do nearly half of what it was capable of doing as recently as a decade or two ago.  Perhaps the "golden" lining in the cloud of old age is having the experience and the wisdom to come to terms with the natural order of birth, life and death and thus become comfortable with and accepting of your own mortality.