The essay I'm sharing here made me think of myself and how my looks have changed over 65 years... and not only my looks:
This morning, my Facebook friend Jane Gross shared this essay on her page. It's from today's Guardian ( UK)
Essay by Penelope Lively: So This is Old Age
Years ago, I heard Anthony Burgess
speak at the Edinburgh book festival. He was impressive in that he spoke
for an hour without a single note, and was fluent and coherent. But of the
content of his talk all I remember are his opening words: "For me, death
is already sounding its high C." This was around 1980, I think, so he was
in his early 60s at the time, and died in 1993. I was in my late 40s,
and he seemed to me – not old, exactly, but getting on a bit.
Today, people in their 60s seem –
not young, just nicely mature. Old age is in the eye of the beholder. I am 80,
so I am old, no question. The high C is audible, I suppose, but I don't pay it
much attention. I don't think much about death. I am not exactly afraid
of it, though after reading, with admiration, Julian Barnes's book Nothing to Be Frightened
of, I felt that I had not sufficiently
explored my own position on the matter. But perhaps I have arrived at the
state of death-consciousness that he identifies – we cannot truly savour life
without a regular awareness of extinction. Yes, I recognise that,
along with the natural human taste for a conclusion: there
has been a beginning, which proposes an end. I am afraid of the run-up to
death, because I have had to watch it. But I think that many of
us who are on the last lap are too busy with the baggage of old
age to waste much time anticipating the finishing line. We have to
get used to being the person we are, the person we have always been,
but encumbered now with various indignities and disabilities, shoved as it
were into some new incarnation. We feel much the same, but clearly are not. We
have entered an unexpected dimension; dealing with this is
the new challenge.
Old age is the new demographic,
and you can't ignore the problems created by a group that has been getting
steadily larger – alarmingly larger if you are in the business of
allocating national expenditure. The poor have always been with us, and now the
old are too.
We have not been, in the past, and
we are not so much around still in some parts of the developing world. But in
the west we are entrenched, bolstered by our pensions, brandishing our Freedom
Passes, cluttering up the surgeries, with an average life expectancy of
around 80. But our experience is one unknown to most of humanity, over
time. We are the pioneers, as an established social group gobbling up
benefits and giving grief to government agencies. Before the 16th century, few
people saw 50, let alone 80. Scroll back, and average life expectancy
diminishes century by century; 2,000 years ago, it stood at around 25. That
said, the old have always been around – it seems that perhaps 8% of the
population of medieval England was over 60 – but not as a significant
demographic group, rather as noticeable individuals.
The Bible blithely allowed for
threescore years and 10 – where on earth did they get that from? You'd
be lucky indeed to make that in the Middle East in Roman times. Life
expectancy is of course a slippery concept. The trick is to get through
infancy, then the next four years; notch those up, and you're in with a
fighting chance – if you are a medieval peasant (or in much of
sub-Saharan Africa, or Afghanistan, today) you may well hang in there till
40 or beyond. But chances are you might not leave toddlerhood; the
underworld is a teeming sea of tiny ghosts, with, dotted among them, out of
scale, inappropriate and incongruous, the exhausted figures of the old. Think
Sparta (babies exposed on hillsides), think Coram's Fields (London hospital for
foundlings), think Hogarth, think Dickens. Think Kindertotenlieder.
A recent survey by the Department
for Work and Pensions, which is somewhat obsessed with the question of old age,
for good reason, found that most believe that old age starts at 59 while youth
ends at 41. People over 80, on the other hand, believe 68 to herald
old age, while 52 is the end of youth. Of course, of course – it
depends where you happen to be standing yourself. And youth has expanded
handsomely since Charlotte Brontë wailed, "I am now 32. Youth is gone
– gone, – and will never come back; can't help it." It still won't come
back, even after a century and a half of scientific advance, but there is
plenty of remedial work on offer by way of nipping and tucking for those
feeling a bit desperate. The rest of us settle for the inevitable sag and
wrinkle, and simply adjust our concept of the climactic points. Actually, I'd
step out of line and go for 70 rather than 68 as the brink of old age; I have
too many vigorous and active friends in their late 60s and anyway the round
number is neater.
By 2030 there will be 4 million
people over 80 in the United Kingdom – out of a population of around 60
million. No wonder the Department for Work and Pensions is getting
rattled on behalf of its successors. I will have handed in my
dinner pail and my Freedom Pass by then, I sincerely hope, though I
can't quite count on it. I come from a horribly long-lived family. My
mother died at 93; her brother made it to 100; their mother reached 97. I look
grimly at these figures; I do not wish to compete.
You aren't going to get old, of
course, when you are young. We won't ever be old, partly because we can't
imagine what it is like to be old, but also because we don't want to, and
– crucially – are not particularly interested. When I was a teenager,
I spent much time with my Somerset grandmother, then around 70. She
was a brisk and applied grandmother who was acting effectively as a
mother-substitute; I was devoted to her, but I don't remember ever
considering what it could be like to be her. She simply was; unchangeable,
unchanging, in her tweed skirt, her blouse, her Shetland cardigan, her suit for
Sunday church, worn with chenille turban, her felt hat for shopping in
Minehead. Her opinions that had been honed in the early part of the century;
her horror of colours that "clashed"; her love of Tchaikovsky,
Beethoven, Berlioz. I never thought about how it must be to be her;
equally, I couldn't imagine her other than she was, as though she had sprung
thus into life, had never been young.
Old age is forever stereotyped.
Years ago, I was a judge for a national children's writing competition.
They had been asked to write about "grandparents"; in every
offering the grandparent was a figure with stick and hearing aid, knitting
by the fireside or pottering in the garden. The average grandparent would then
have been around 60, and probably still at work. When booking a rail ticket by
phone recently, I found myself shifted from the automated voice to a real
person when I had said I had a Senior Railcard, presumably on the grounds that
I might get muddled and require help – which was kindly, I suppose, but I
was managing quite well. We are too keen to bundle everyone by category; as
a child, I used to be maddened by the assumption that I would get along
famously with someone just because we were both eight.
"What do they think has
happened, the old fools, / To make them like this?" Any reference to Philip Larkin's poem in this context is almost a cliche. The poem marries
perception of age with stark truth: "Well, / We shall find out." He
never did, of course, dying at 63. And the perception is of drooling, confused,
incapable old age – not a stereotype so much as an evocation, both harsh and
reflective.
Am I envious of the young? Would
I want to be young again? On the first count – not really, which surprises
me. On the second – certainly not, if it meant a repeat performance.
I would like to have back vigour and robust health, but that is not exactly
envy. And, having known youth, I'm well aware that it has its own traumas, that
it is no Elysian progress, that it can be a time of distress and
disappointment, that it is exuberant and exciting, but it is no picnic. I don't
particularly want to go back there.
And in any case, I am someone else
now. There are things I no longer want, things I no longer do, things that are
now important. Writing survives, for me – so far, so far. Other pleasures –
needs – do not. I was a gardener. Well, I am a gardener, but a sadly
reduced one, in every sense... It gives me much pleasure, but is a far cry from what I once gardened –
...
And that was – is – the miraculous power of gardening: it evokes tomorrow,
it is eternally forward-looking...Gardening defies time; you labour today in the
interests of tomorrow; you think in seasons to come, cutting down the border
this autumn but with next spring in your mind's eye.
Can't garden. Don't want
to travel. But can read, must read. For me, reading is the essential
palliative, the daily fix. Old reading, revisiting, but new reading too, lots
of it, reading in all directions, plenty of fiction, history and
archaeology always, reading to satisfy perennial tastes, reading sideways too –
try her, try him, try that.
This someone else, this alter ego
who has arrived, is less adventurous, more risk-averse, costive with her time.
Well – there is the matter of the spirit and the flesh, and that is the crux of
it: the spirit is still game for experience, anything on offer, but the body
most definitely is not, and unfortunately calls the shots. My mind seems to be
holding out – so far, so far. My poor father had Alzheimer's; that shadow lies
over all of my age group, with the number of sufferers now rising all the time
– but that is of course a factor of the new demographic.
Professor Tom Kirkwood has written:
"There is a little progress with age-related diseases." But he went
on to say that in his study of a group over 85 not one had zero age-related
disease, and most had four or five. Doctors' surgeries and hospital waiting
rooms are well stocked with those over 65; it is the old and the young who
demand most attention. Over the last years, I have had surgery and treatment
for breast cancer; hips and knees are holding out so far but my back gave
in long ago: I have been in intermittent pain for 15 years – discomfort always,
tipping into real pain. My sight is dodgy – myopic macular degeneration, which
may get worse (but also – fingers crossed – may not). There is a shoulder
problem – a torn tendon. The worst was a cracked vertebra, four years ago,
which required surgery – balloon kyphoplasty – which left me in
intense, unrelenting and apparently inexplicable pain for three and a half
months. Pain that had the specialists shaking their heads, baffled, passing me
around like the unwelcome parcel in that children's game – and I am sorry,
apologetic, through the miasma of pain, sorry to be such a challenge, but
sorrier still for myself.
I have sometimes wondered if an
experience like that has some salutary value for any of us: it puts into
perspective subsequent distresses. As for the rest of my continuing
ailments, they seem more or less par for the course for an 80 year old; of
those I know in my age group, most can chalk up a few, or more, with only one
or two that I can think of maddeningly unscathed.
You get used to it. And that
surprises me. You get used to diminishment, to a body that is stalled, an
impediment. An alter ego is amazed, aghast perhaps – myself in the roaring
40s, when robust health was an assumption, a given, something you barely
noticed because it was always there. Acceptance has set in, somehow, has crept
up on you, which is just as well, because the alternative – perpetual rage and
resentment – would not help matters. "In 70 or 80 years a Man may
have a deep Gust of the World. Know what it is, what it can afford, and what
'tis to have been a Man." Reading Sir Thomas Browne, today I'm in touch with a former self, who was discovering
Urne-Buriall in Oxfordshire in the 1970s: "The treasures of
time lie high, in Urnes, Coynes and Monuments, scarce below the roots of some
vegetables." Today, I am warming to Browne's discussion of the long
view: "such a compass of years will shew new examples of old things,
parallelisms of occurrences through the whole course of Time, and nothing
be monstrous unto him, who may in that time understand not only the varieties
of Man, but the varieties of himself, and how many Men he hath been in that
extent of time." Yes, yes – exactly. And how strange, how exciting, to
find an echo of what I have been thinking about myself in that wonderful
17th‑century mind.
And it is of the varieties of myself
that I am aware, seeing how today's response to Browne links me to that
Oxfordshire self, in mid-life, busy with children, but essentially the
same person. The body may decline, may seem a dismal reflection of what
went before, but the mind has a healthy continuity, and some kind
of inbuilt fidelity to itself, a coherence over time. We learn, and
experience; attitudes and opinions may change, but most people, it seems to me,
retain an essential persona, a caste of mind, a trademark footprint. A
poet's voice will alter and develop, but young Wordsworth,
Tennyson,
Larkin
are not essentially adrift from their later selves. There is this
interesting accretion – the varieties of ourselves – and the puzzling thing in
old age is to find yourself out there as the culmination of all these,
knowing that they are you, but that you are also now this someone
else.
...
A common experience – like old
age itself, for those fortunate enough (if that is the right word) to get
there. Here we are – the eightysomethings – around 1.4 million of us in the UK,
most of us with nothing much in common except the accretion of years, a
historical context, and a generous range of ailments from which we have
probably been allocated two or three. For each of us the experience is different,
each of us endures – or challenges – it differently. Both endurance and
challenge will of course be more successful from the vantage point of
financial security, and if you are not too encumbered on the ailment
front.
Old age costs; it costs the nation,
it costs those going through it. We contribute nothing, but require
maintenance – a winter fuel allowance, free TV licence, bus pass, free
prescriptions, all the kindly state indulgences. Those don't add up to luxury,
for anyone, any more than the state pension does other than provide basic
subsistence. And old age has its needs, its greeds. You may not yearn for a
Caribbean cruise – I don't – but certain comforts have become essential,
the accustomed perks that make daily existence a bit more than just that. I
can't start the day without a bowl of the right kind of muesli topped with some
fruit and sheep's milk yoghurt; I can't end it without a glass (or two) of
wine. I need the diversions of radio and television. I want flowers in the
house and something tempting to eat – these are greeds, I think, rather than
needs. And – high priority – there is reading, the daily fix, the time of
immersion in whatever is top of my book pile right now. As demands,
requirements, all of this is relatively modest. Much of it – the reading, the
flowers – goes back to prelapsarian days before old age. The difference,
though, is that then there were further needs and greeds, and those seem to
have melted away, to have tactfully absented themselves as though to make things
a bit easier because they would indeed be an encumbrance now.
Out with acquisition, excitement,
and aspiration except in tempered mode. And, on another front, I don't in the
least lament certain emotions. I can remember falling in love, being
in love; life would have been incomplete without that particular exaltation,
but I wouldn't want to go back there. I still love – there is a
swath of people whom I love – but I am glad indeed to be done with that
consuming, tormenting form of the emotion.
So this is old age. If you are not
yet in it, you may be shuddering. If you are, you will perhaps disagree, in
which case I can only say: this is how it is for me. And if it sounds – to
anyone – a pretty pallid sort of place, I can refute that. It is not. Certain desires
and drives have gone. But what remains is response. I am as alive to the world
as I have ever been – alive to everything I see and hear and feel. I
revel in the spring sunshine, and the cream and purple hellebore in the garden;
I listen to a radio discussion about the ethics of selective abortion, and chip
in at points; the sound of a beloved voice on the phone brings a surge of
pleasure. I think there is a sea-change, in old age – a metamorphosis of
the sensibilities. With those old consuming vigours now muted, something else
comes into its own – an almost luxurious appreciation of the world that you are
still in. Spring was never so vibrant; autumn never so richly gold. People are
of abiding interest – observed in the street, overheard on a bus. The small
pleasures have bloomed into points of relish in the day – food, opening the
newspaper (new minted, just for me), a shower, the comfort of bed. It is almost
like some kind of end-game salute to the intensity of childhood experience,
when the world was new. It is an old accustomed world now, but invested with
fresh significance; I've seen all this before, done all this, but am somehow
able to find new and sharpened pleasure.
Those of us not yet in the departure
lounge and still able to take a good look at what has made them – us – like
this can find some solace in doing so. What has happened is such an eccentric
mixture of immediate and long-drawn-out, the arrival of a condition that has
been decades in the making but seems to have turned up this morning. The
succession of people that we have been – Sir Thomas Browne's
"varieties of himself" – are suddenly elided into this (final?)
version, disturbingly alien when we catch sight of a mirror, but also evocative
of a whole range of known personae. What we have been still lurks – and even
more so within. This old age self is just a top dressing, it seems; early
selves are still mutinously present, getting a word in now and then. And
all this is interesting – hence the solace. I never imagined that old age would
be quite like this – possibly because, like most, I never much bothered to
imagine it.
by Penelope Lively pub in The Guardian 10/6/2013
