* REALLY OLD AGE *

Physical and mental stress also gradually declines in old age, steadily increasing in childhood and adolescence. However, this does not mean the economic, productive uselessness of the elderly.
  Rich morals and working experience gave them equal rights in the family and society. If you cannot plow, nobody can do better sowing than you. Previously, he was chopping massive logs. Now, there is even more to do in the woods for him. It was simply a disgrace to hew pine needles, bark, and birch bark for mature men.
 If the grandmother could no longer weave canvas, she would again be called to the rescue when spinning. Without the old folks, a large family couldn't survive. If the family did not have a grandmother or grandfather, they would be invited to live with a lonely or disabled old woman, and she babysat the children.
An old person in a typical family did not feel a burden and did not suffer from boredom. He always had something to do; he was needed by each one separately and all together. He would lie on the stove and tell a grandson tales because telling or singing is no less entertaining than listening. To another grandson, he will make a pacifier from clay. Adolescent girls carve a spindle for a lady of the house, fix the kitchen tools, bring twigs for brooms, and then weave the shoes; daughter-in-law makes a brick-brack box, cuts spoon out of linden tree wood for everybody. It does take a lot of work to please everyone!
A really old man and a child are equally helpless and equally vulnerable. To an insensitive, thick-skinned man accustomed to the moral authority of parents, to their high standards, and spiritual and physical cleanliness, it will be hard to understand why grandmother over-salted cabbage and grandfather, always so careful, accurate, suddenly forgot to close the well or soaked his shirt. In such cases, to refrain from a reproach or rebuke could only men of high moral standing.
And it was precisely at such moments that his responsibility for the family matured, for its strength and prosperity, and not when he plowed a pen or cut down a new house. Of course, the attitude towards children and the elderly has always depended on society's moral level. This relation can probably almost accurately determine which way a nation goes and what awaits them soon. Another ethical and philosophical principle to judge people is the attitude toward death.
     Death to a Russian peasant seemed as natural as birth, but a solemn and menacing (and for many believers and even joyful) event, relieving from the physical suffering associated with senile decay and the moral anguish caused by the inability to continue working. Lacking their physical strength, old men did not lose their spiritual forces. Some called for the death, while others waited patiently for her. But as the saying goes: "Without death, one will not die." Suicide was considered a disgrace, a crime against themselves and others.
To the Northern Russian peasant, death did not cause fear or despair. On the contrary, it was the equivalent of the secret mystery of birth. Since you have already been born, death is as necessary as life. A natural and normal sequence in the changing age characteristics led to a philosophical, religious, and spiritual balance, a calm self-perception of the end of the road ... Namely, the sequence, the gradualism.
 While still of sound mind and strength, the old folks were quietly and with a certain solemnity preparing themselves for death. But meeting her calmly could only be someone who lived with dignity, sought not to do evil, and those who were not lonely had a family. According to popular understanding, the greater the sins are, the more difficult it is to die. Of course, there are no totally sinless people, and everyone felt the value of the degree of his own sins, their crimes before the people and the world. Pangs of conscience conform to the weight of this sin, so the religious rite of Communion and confession alleviated suffering from the dying.
Many people in old age look young. A Young, almost youthful face is a sign of kindness and a lack of evil. To some extent, longevity is dependent on kindness and health. Anger causes the disease, at least through our ancestors. From the contemporary point of view, it is naive. But naiveté is not necessarily stupid or absent of high inner culture.
Human life lies between two great mysteries: the secret of our appearance and the mystery of disappearance. Birth and death protect us from the horror of infinity. Both are associated with brief physical suffering. The child has it just as hard during childbirth as a mother, but the first pain is better than the last as the first battle. A man meets the labour of death, being prepared by life and overcoming physical suffering. Therefore, despite all the diversity of attitudes to end ("How many people, so many deaths…"), there was all the same/widespread/ attitude towards it - calm and wise.
It was believed that non-existence after death is the same as non-existence before birth, that earthly life is given to man as an award, and that something important is obscured from him by the secrets of those two mysteries. The logic and timeliness of all that inevitably being accomplished between birth and death affected all the features of traditional aesthetics.