But you ARE old....

…said one of my nearest and dearest. She went on, ‘you’ve been saying that you are old for years and now it’s true’. The plain message which if not stated but certainly hinted at, was that there should be no more talk about being old. Does that imply 'old' is an estate, a condition that can be defined, immutable, a goal which I had now reached. ‘Talk about something else’ was the hidden inference, which is good advice.

But of course ‘old’ is not like that : a fixed state of being, once realised defining you as a new person. Instead like most things it is a relative experience. One hears of people who at an advanced age are amazingly alert and mentally aware and I have mentioned some whom I know in these blogs. There are others who are ‘old’ at sixty and seem to have given up the hunger for life. I deliberately hold on to the theme of these blogs -'ageing'-, reluctant to use the word ‘elderly’ for that too suggests a condition, preferring to describe what we are thinking about and many of us experiencing, as a process, not a junction without an exit.

I seem to have met a lot of people recently who have complained about being old and clearly I am in danger of becoming one of them. It’s no help to anyone to say to a younger person ( and I’ve heard it said ), ‘don’t get old’ . Despite that gloomy prognosis, there are many good prospects about the latter years. Constant complaint about the demerits doesn’t win friends.

I was talking to a colleague whose 78th birthday is today. He has had two heart bypasses and is now suffering from Parkinson’s disease which medication holds in check. He has managed a full sized allotment for over 40 years and is still doing so. He is a constant source of encouragement and quiet advice to those of us doing the same but without the difficulties he has.

Talking to him yesterday, we discovered we were the same age, and exchanged experiences. We agreed that the difference between acknowledging physical limitations and managing them can be two different things. We are the same persons we have been since birth and the will and desire to live are just as they have always been. But somehow we have to balance desire with reality, infinite intention with limited capacity. It’s a challenge and one we accept if not exactly welcome.

So, I agree, less talk about being old and more about the continued journey of ageing, facing if not resolving this creative tension between what we can do about it and what we can’t.

Bryan

' Just Doodling About'

Publisher, novelist and literary editor Diana Athill has worked closely with many authors, including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, and V.S. Naipaul as well as writing many books of her own. She has recently published what she says is her last book, ‘Somewhere Towards the End’, and appropriately for someone in her early nineties, the book is a reflection on the end years of her life. She says that none of the books she has written have been planned - either they happened or they haven’t. She enjoyed writing the book, says that it would have been longer ‘if there had been anything more to say’, but having talked about it at Literary Festivals, has decided that the end-years are no longer taboo as many people think. Instead there is a need for people to talk about growing old and sharing their feelings about death.

The best thing about writing the book she says was remembering past pleasures, particularly the people she has loved. ‘That of course is a pastime very common in old age, even when you are not calling it up deliberately during the writing of a book: one does spend a lot of time just doodling about in one’s memories ….it has occurred to me that possibly when you see very old people apparently just sitting and gazing into space they may in fact be having quite a nice time inside their heads’.

This business of staring into space strikes a chord for me. It happened this morning when after a bit of hard digging on my allotment, I sat and stared into the joy of an early Spring morning for rather longer than my tiredness warranted. I’ve done this before, in denial of my ingrained Protestant work-ethic conscience: doing nothing in a sort of profitable way. I have seen many elderly people in geriatric homes whose thoughts are now too far away to be gathered, and at first when this happened I feared it meant the warning signs of my own senility were approaching. It may even be so. But I like to think ‘just doodling about’ is in fact as Diana Athill says, a ‘nice time’ inside my head.

When there are so many nasty things happening outside our heads in this fractured, it seems almost demonic age we are living through, that’s not perhaps a bad place to be.

Bryan

'About Time : Growing Old Disgracefully' *

This is the title of a new book by the journalist Irma Kurtz who has been an agony aunt on the magazine ‘Cosmopolitan’ for 36 years. I am grateful to R.R. for drawing my attention to an interview with the author in a recent edition of’ The Times’ of London.

Kurtz says, ‘we really are pioneers. This generation of old people, there's never been anything like us before. We live in the present. It has to do with us and now, not us and our memories. Oh, we take them with us and we're made by them, but that doesn't mean that you don't exist now and have an effect in the present. We have to find ways of staying in life. We, the aged, must remain curious and able to change our minds. It's as important as a flexible spine. More, maybe.’

‘In the long run you do have to work at being alert. You have to not give in to being old.” Her generation, she says, is different from their predecessors because they are healthier, more energetic and experienced, more educated, likely to live longer, and if they're not always prosperous, they are less often hungry. You must be yourself, she urges. “The only way to grow old is your way. You have to not knuckle under and become a statistic.”

Being old, she says, can be difficult, ‘because we’re being pushed out – you’re past it. There’s no recognition of how much we had to do to get here and how much we’ve learned. A lot of older women start to feel invisible and they’re very miffed…but I’ve seen behaviour I could never have witnessed before because people don’t care I’m watching’. Sometimes, she admits, she feels an intense melancholy, a passive kind of depression that she thinks all old people experience, but there are shafts of lights as well.

She enthuses about having had a child, because its a very lonely thing, getting old’. And being a grandmother is another unexpected joy. ‘It is no longer a state to be taken for granted, she says, though for her it is a final passion at a time when she wasn’t expecting another one. And she is devoted to the art of indulging the young! When she is alone with her grandchild she has been known to give him chocolate, contrary to his parents’ instructions. ‘Now I wasn’t supposed to give him ice-cream was I? Oh what! It’s traditional to have secrets but it's true that the disgraceful way to grow old is to refuse to grow old in the corner where the younger generation would tend to put you. Don’t do it’.

Bryan
*the book is published by John Murray

Senior Citizen Hits Back

Last year a 98 year old woman in the UK wrote to her bank manager thus….
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three 'nanoseconds' must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery….. ……Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.

Your Humble Client