Being Old!

That is so different from feeling old! Being old is what I think of other people or what others may think of me. Feeling old is so much more personal. Feeling old is so much more a recent phenomenon, something that has crept up on me so much more recently.

I have noticed that, being old, in other people for a long time, as the ranks of my contemporaries has been thinning out. But now, I am noticing how the distances I want to cover, have to cover, seem so much further away. I am much slower in my reach, much slower to pick up things, so much slower to get up and go. When did I develop that tremor that I never noticed before? Why do I not recall the name, the word, that I used to instantly recall? What’s happening? I must be getting old. It makes me feel old.

I have always reveled in the richness of my memories, my memories of things that so many around me have not the least idea about these days. My triumphs that were so much a part of the contemporary scene of my day have paled in the face of the tumbling present that occupies the contemporary mind. My past has become an irrelevancy. I have had to comfort myself with the private knowledge that the Present all of us so take for granted is based on what I and my contemporaries had built so solidly in the past. If we were to dare recount them we would be written off as old bores.

I find I now have a reluctance to add new articles to my closet. What I have there are the things I put on like old companions that wrap me in comfort. The odds and ends that I have accumulated are the precious reminders of my days of derring-do, purchased thoughtlessly at the risk of life and limb. Those were the days when I travelled to heart of darkness without a thought to the risks, the dangers that were present on every side. Those days we knew we were immortal. The eagerness with which we contemplated those futures seem so foolhardy today as we look to our tomorrows today from our comfortable armchairs.

Like the just desserts for the conquering hero, I earned my reward, albeit at the age of seventy-one. Correcting the errors and omissions of a callow youth, lacking the courage of my convictions, throwing caution to the winds, I gained the love and companionship of my true love after an interregnum of over fifty years. Thereafter, I had to learn how to appreciate the needs of others as the road to ultimately meeting those of own. It took the reasoning and wisdom of advancing age, and altered priorities, to gain that knowledge enabling me to re-engineer the person that I was.

Each day we launch our enterprise to meet the challenges of our daily life. If the objective is to fill the pantry or the fridge, we count it a victory if we return home without failing to return with all the items on the grocery list we may have carried in our minds. If we meet others with whom we may be sharing a community activity, we count ourselves brilliant if we remember the names of our comrades and the places where we may have encountered them. We have taken to the practice of notation to ensure we do not miss birthdays and anniversaries of even our closest kin. If all else fails we resort to internet searches on the computer to compensate for any breaches we may come across in the things we surely know by heart.  It is always a joint product as we seek to light the fires of memory in each other.

We are engaged in the habit of doing puzzles. I hate puzzles, but they are one of the medicines I faithfully take to counter the inevitable breaches in my armor that have accumulated over time. We exercise.  Ditto to my personal appreciation of the activity. We socialize. I am most happy at home with a book or an exciting mystery or bang-up violence on my TV. But  I happily do all those things the good doctors tell us as good for our health.

I do like to be surrounded by children. That gives me a charge. The spontaneity is just marvelous to behold. And they are so beautiful to behold. I am sure having them in one’s life will keep one young, even if they sometimes tire you out. But it is a good tired!

But no serious food exclusions!

I am sure that I will expire consuming one of those things we have been seriously warned is bound to bring us to the edge of existence. I bear these admonitions in mind but I am an inveterate cheater. So even if the time comes sooner, we have had a good run and I will go out smiling. Don’t tell my wife, because she absolutely won’t hear of my going off without her. I know she is watching me. She is feeding me good stuff all the time, and stuffing me with vitamins when she can. But when I trespass I feel less old.

Some of us may miss the cut and thrust of being out in the world, struggling with the demons we all have to face in life, but it is a relief, in the end, to no longer worrying about what might be happening behind our back. We may have had to give up many of our dreams of material gain, but we are happy enough with our widow’s mite that yet remains to us. And we gaze out at the world more or less secure.

Being old without feeling old is the secret, isn’t it?