I have been thinking a lot about age and aging. Inevitably, as seventy odd years have slipped by since I started counting.
I don’t think I ever expected to get old. I know when I was very young I looked at older people as if they were a different species and attributed to them attitudes and characteristics based on their years. My imagination was nothing like the reality I am living now.
I do count the years now. Not those that have gone, but those I hope are still remaining. I don't want to waste a moment. I treasure a day spent in joy, without having to measure it by achievement or activity. I seek out small pleasures all the time.
I have to confess that I pay attention to the age at which people’s death is announced on the news. “Oh no, that’s not long enough” if they have died close to my own age. But then those who linger on too long don’t always have the faculties to appreciate the extra time.
I think a lot more about death. I had a quite a long time where it was a constant preoccupation. “What will it be like?” “What happens afterwards?” “How can I bear to leave this beautiful world? My beloved people? This beautiful body that has served me so well?”
At first it was an anxious preoccupation that would catch me in the early hours of the morning and then it became a conscious exploration and gradually a friendly voice that reminds me to treasure this moment.
And of course there are the fears that go alongside that. What if I become unable to care for myself? What if all my faculties desert me?
I am fascinated by how our cultural expectations have coloured how I view my own ageing. What did I expect? How was that coloured by the way the older generations of my family aged and how was I influenced by the larger picture of our culture?
I saw a film where some people from Ladakh were shown a modern care home and were moved to tears that we incarcerate our elderly people in single rooms in institutions.
As long as we measure personal worth by income or the hours of work, the old will be seen as a burden. In Ladakh, before the advent of roads and modern influences, the old were honoured and cared for without question. I experienced that reverence once in India when a young man knelt and kissed my feet because I was a grandmother.
But here, it feels very different.
The stereotype of the “little old lady”
“You don’t look your age” is offered as a complement.
And, of women “ despite her age she was still beautiful.”
How I hate the road sign outside residential homes. A man leans forward on a stick, a woman walks behind him apparently leaning on him. Ageist, sexist and the epitome of the stereotype of old age.
Illness often accompanies getting older and can be thrown into the mix; “I’m feeling my age”, a client may say when they come to see me. But when we are well we can sail on into even older years without complaint.
And many, many people are ending their lives in our culture in poverty and loneliness. A crime we should all look on with shame.
I would like to shout from the roof tops that age is just not like that. Look at the old people you see and imagine the richness of all those years of life, but imagine also the possibility that they may be peacefully savouring each passing day.
