A Silent Voice?

It was announced by the government’s Minister for Women, Harriet Harman, last Autumn that the broadcaster and writer Dame Joan Bakewell had agreed to be a Voice of Older People, acting as an "independent and informed advocate" on older people's issues. As a seventy five year old herself, her role would be to raise the profile of age equality issues and encourage public debate around age discrimination laws. She was to be invited to give her views on key policy developments and to speak at government events. This would be part of the government’s plans announced last June, to bring new legislation to Parliament to spread equality and fair treatment throughout the community and outlaw ageism.

I wrote a blog on this in November and admitted that I was rather skeptical about the idea and it now looks as if I had reason to be. The National Pensioners Convention, representing 1.5 M members, invited Ms Bakewell to discuss her views on Pensions, care and other important topics. She responded that this was not possible because of her other commitments. She had a heavy postbag and whilst admiring the work of the N.P.C., there were many other organisations involved in provision for older people, and she had many diary commitments. The N.C.P. Vice President says ‘When the so-called voice of older people is too busy to talk to one of the country’s biggest older people’s organisations, you have to wonder whose views she’s going to represent.

Using every opportunity to raise awareness of issues that affect older people, the strength of the Convention is in its local Forums, and the member of one of these when she heard of Ms Bakewell’s response, wrote to her complaining at this reluctance to meet with the N.P.C. In her reply, Ms Bakewell said that she had several dozen invitations to meet and talk. ‘You should perhaps know that being the Voice of Older People is a voluntary appointment, and runs alongside my professional life.’ The Forum member suggested in her reply that if Ms Bakewell couldn’t do the job properly, she shouldn’t do it at all.

Who is most at fault here? The government for making a token appointment without sufficient thought and infastructure, or Dame Joan for accepting it? Jack Jones, onetime President of the N.P.C. and throughout his life a committed socialist and trade unionist, wounded when he fought for the International Brigade against the fascists on the Ebro front, died last Tuesday at the age of 96. A visionary and idealist, he would have had some strong words to say about this.

Bryan

' I don't believe in God....

….but I miss Him’. So begins Julian Barnes' recent book ‘Nothing to be Afraid Of’ which I am now reading. Influenced by his admiration for the French pastoral writer Jules Renard, the book is an uncompromising look at the inevitability of death, a subject which in these postings we have evaded until now. Barnes insists that his book is not an autobiography but instead a tapestry of memory and reflection with constant references to his immediate family and in particular his older brother, and always with the recurrent theme of his own attitude to death.

The brothers talk to each other about their shared experiences from earliest days. When you are young, Barnes says, memory is an immediate experience, but as an adult we are affected by approximation, fluidity and doubt. When we are older we start to recall lost segments of childhood which become more vivid than those of our middle years. Its an experience which I recognise as my own.

Julian Barnes says that he has a fear of death and insists that it’s a rational fear whereas when people believed in God (he assumes no one still does), at least you could ‘negotiate’ death. God could be moved from being the Vengeful One to the Infinitely Merciful One. You can’t do the same with death. ‘Death can’t be talked down, or parlayed into anything; it simply declines to come to the negotiating table…it is impervious to insult, complaint or condescension., death never lets you down, remains on call seven days a week, and is happy to work three consecutive eight-hour shifts’.

Barnes maintains –as far as I have read – this light, ironic, teasing style, and yet behind the mask, there seems to be a real anxiety about an ending to his life compared to the certainty which he assumes people of faith possess. As you get older. this counterpoint between personal faith and facing the ultimate end to your life becomes inescapable. I am a bereavement counsellor. Being with people who find it hard to adjust to the death of a loved one, I can’t escape from thinking at the back of my mind, about my own.

I have been trying to be honest with myself. Where I am fearful – or apprehensive – is the manner of my death. Like everyone else I don’t want my life to end with a whimper or in great pain or in mental confusion. I want it to be tidy and conclusive, an end which marks – for me – an interesting life where there was work to be done, people to love and to be loved by, and a community of faith to belong to. But of course the ending can’t be arranged, but an acceptance of its inevitability can. And I think – I may be kidding myself – I am fairly calm about that.

Bryan

No Gloom

I’m concerned that these postings shouldn't be inappropriately down-beat. Its true that tracking the process of getting older can be dispiriting and especially so if you want to be honest as I do, and as many others do who bring to the attention of a wider audience the perils and pitfalls of ageing. However, there are many good things about getting older. And of those surely having lost of good and precious friends must be high on the list of positives.

My wife recently had a significent birthday and had the brilliant idea of celebrating it by having a mammoth party. She invited relations from all sides of the family, several of them only having a connection with each other through her, in some cases never having met before. Then we invited friends we have made through the years on our travels, a sort of surrogate family with whom we feel related through affection and shared experience. Two cousins were on a Caribbean cruise and obviously couldn’t come, but everyone else could, and did. There were sixty two of us. We booked an excellent venue, balloons, music and flowers everywhere arranged by our daughters, brilliant caterers, and everyone it seemed as happy as we were.

It was a more difficult day for four of us. Our ten year old grandson was unwell and needed a hospital check on Sunday and for him and his mother six hours waiting to be reassured was not quite how they wanted to spend so much of their forty eight hours in Bath. Two friends were knocked down by a taxi as they arrived on the Saturday and they too spent some time hospitalised the next day and needed check-ups when they returned home. On the law of averages, sixty people together from all parts of the country and from Spain, unwelcome things may happen. But the casualties were resilient and managed to keep stoical and cheerful.

So often in the past such gatherings as this have been the result of a death in the family. But this one was about life!! On the following day a group of us had a walk in the sunshine along a canal, ending up at a cousin’s commodious house for drinks and eats. Then in the evening our immediate family were together, relaxing and sharing experiences. Wonderful.

It was a great time, and for those of us who are older than we would chose to be, there was a total absence of gloom!

Bryan