My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I’ve begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I’ve had it good and am crumbling nicely.

Blue’s wry, self-deprecating humor frames aging not as a catastrophe but as a lived, inherited practice. By crediting his mother’s example—she “enjoyed old age”—he suggests that attitudes toward later life can be learned through intimate observation rather than abstract advice. The phrase “crumbling nicely” acknowledges physical decline without sentimentality, turning deterioration into something almost aesthetic or at least manageable. The quote balances gratitude (“I’ve had it good”) with realism about mortality, implying that dignity in old age may come from accepting limits, finding small pleasures, and keeping one’s comic perspective even as the body fails.