My Child a Pensioner.....

….was the heading of an article in The Guardian the other day by Tim de Lisle. Various old people with children of pensionable age were interviewed. Mary Long is 93 and her son Simon is 65. Asked if the parent-child relationship changes over the years she replied: ‘Do you know, I’ve never really thought. I don’t think it does.’ Did she still see the small boy in her son? ‘Awfully difficult to forget! But it’s lovely that I’m not responsible for him any more and don’t have to get up in the night’. How old is old? Mary says firmly ‘Old means ten years older than you are now’ Does she feel old? ‘Not really. My own grandparents always wore black, and I haven’t even got a black dress’.

Betty Stafford (92) lives alone in central London. Her daughter lives in Henley and her son Julian who is 70, in Paris, from where he commutes twice a week to see his mother for dinner. He feels he is catching up on his mother: ‘I don’t really feel like a younger generation. There are times when I go round to see her after a wearying flight or something and she looks more in robust health than I feel. Our ages have grown closer together. Our conversations are very much about the people we both know, and who’s died of our generation. Many of her old friends are my friends too. The generations do merge’. Are people living too long? ‘Oh yes. I am! I want to see my next great grandchild, but I’d like to die before next winter. My brain is active and all that, but I just feel I’m not as strong as I was and I don’t want to be a bore’.

Rose Hacker is 100 this week, her son Lawrence 73. She worries that the generation below her’s is suffering. ‘Our parents all obligingly died in their 70’s. But now a lot of people I know have old parents to look after and some old people can be very difficult. So here are people who should be in the prime of their life, and they are terribly stressed. She feels that we need ‘an education in how to be old.’ And what should it teach? ‘That you should not be so bloody selfish. You have to learn to accept. As you get older, your faculties gradually go and it’s no use expecting your children to do everything. You’ve got to learn to find a centre within yourself. I can sit here forever with my memories and my music.’

Bryan