As others have mentioned, many gay men who are 60 years old (plus or minus a few) never expected to live this long. So in a sense, we're having to make it up as we go along.
The sad truth is that there were times (for me, perhaps for others of the same age, nearly 60) that I didn't want to live this long. I didn't want to live to age 30.
It's hard for today's young networked, digitally native gays to imagine that in the first 20 years of your life:
1. Next to no one even dared to mention the word "gay," even though you had internalized the concept as a youngster. Nonetheless the words sissy, fag, faggot, homo, pansy and queer were hurled by bullies without resulting in any discipline or consequence.
2. There was no internet, or any ready source to find out anything about being gay. If you dared to conduct research in the library (with the accompanying terror of being caught with one of "those" books), you'd find that being "homosexual" was a mental disorder.
3. There were no "online communities," where a young gay person could anonymously connect with others having the same feelings, questions and pain.
4. There were no "straight/gay alliances," or anything of the sort. You're basically on your own (and finding "someone else" often came with great peril of physical or emotional harm). Good luck with all of that.
5. The only gay man you ever read about in the news (the only AIDS back then was Ayds weight-loss candy..."I've always wanted to lose weight, and now with Ayds I can!") was in a Time magazine issue lying on the coffee table in your parents' living room, if they dared display it at all. The cover story described the ordeal of someone who honorably served in the military (Leonard Matlovich) and then was discharged after "revealing his homosexuality" (or "coming out," which sounds more benign in hindsight). Message received: keep your mouth shut.
6. As you finally reach college age, a terrible disease about which scientists know little and about which most politicians care little, begins to devastate gay men. No one knows exactly what caused this disease, how it was transmitted, or who had it (although in the latter case, the disease helpfully marked some gay men with giant purple splotches or a gaunt, nearly-wasted-away body). It would be years before definitive information, much less an effective treatment, would come to light. So good luck as you furtively explore your true sexual nature, usually anonymously.
7. If you make it out of high school or college and into a career, you must keep your sexual orientation secret or risk being fired immediately, with no legal recourse.
So live through all of that, come out (not as a teenager but years or decades later in life), figure out what kind of life you'd like or are able to have, and then try to live it.
Small wonder that the "older years" after retiring from the workforce, losing many "friends," especially men, whom you managed to summon the courage to come out to only to be insulted and permanently rejected, finding someone more or less your age who wasn't already "killed off" to try to form some semblance of domestic life that most Americans, well over half, including many or most members of your extended family, thought was heinously immoral, and (assuming you do find that relationship), have no medical coverage, bereavement leave, or any other workplace benefits for your partner (relegated to "partner" status because "marriage" was illegal, if not unthinkable), and avoiding death or serious injury from a gay-bashing (which, in any event, wouldn't usually result in any legal action against the assailants).
Considering all of this, are there "silver linings" to getting older? Why, yes, as it happens, there are.