Maggie Redding shares her insights into positive ageing:
I have good news. Getting older can be a liberating experience.
Imagine two images: one of an old lady, bent and with a stick. You can’t see her face. But she is clearly old, recognisably so. She is like the image on road signs that warn of old people crossing the road.
We have stereotypes of old people, old women, old men, that put fear into the hearts of those approaching their later years, their retirement, a fear endorsed by jokes, birthday cards and the emails that circulate amongst Silver Surfers.
I met this lady (from my imaginatiom) in real life, staggering slowly with two sticks, her clothes ill-fitting and footwear that told me she had problems dressing. I watched her agonising progress for a moment then went up to her.
‘Are you going far?’ I asked her.
She lifted up her face and gave me a wonderful, and unexpected smile. She was beautiful, I could see it now.
‘No, dear. I’m only going to that car. That’s my daughter loading up for me. I don’t drive now, you see. So she drives me. Thank you so much for asking.’ Her voice was beautiful, too. She indicated with one of her sticks a large blonde woman with unkempt hair and a hang dog expression.
Yes, she was my imagination-lady but in my mind, she had a miserable face, even though I couldn’t see it. It is hard to resist stereotypes.
The second image I have is of someone attempting to do just that. This woman is in denial in a big way. She joins in everything. She tries to act young.. Some of these attempts are most inappropriate. She sleeps the sleep of the utterly exhausted and rises early just to make more time for more efforts to prove her point - to herself of course - that she is not getting old.
I feel we are in danger of creating new, dangerous and really silly expectations, aims and models of behaviour for our rising older generation.
But I have good news. Getting older can be a liberating experience.
Old age is a time when others cease to have expectations of us and when we cease to have expectations of ourselves and others. We don’t need to succeed, improve, inspire. We can give up work, we have fewer responsibilities, we forsake our illusions. Retirement, old age can be a time for happiness, peace, freedom, contentment, liberation. Yes, we are all going to die. But I am not going to die until I have lived and lived to the full. I believe it is the role of older people to show younger people how to live fully.
We don’t need to do anything spectacular. Old age is a time to live, not to show off or prove something. It is a time for being who you really are, not worrying what people think. You can do what you want. There is no need to pretend you are young.
Yes, I am old. I am getting older. I have problems. I’ll have more.
But I am learning to accept myself as I really am, faults and all. And it doesn’t matter.
All the things I used to believe were important, I realise now, they weren’t. Pleasing people, being conventional, worrying about big issues, worrying about small issues - I’ve let them go. I am less judgemental. I let people be. I realise that the world will never be perfect. In fact I could be really miffed at the thought that it might become perfect after I’d gone.
Of course, everyone has fears growing older as well as before that. We fear looking old, dying alone, being attacked, being robbed, cheated, we fear illness, not being taken seriously, being abandoned. Yes, we all fear these things and more.
But I think security is a myth. It is in the interests of a lot of people to make you feel afraid. Fear makes money - for those who are younger. It doesn’t make money for you, when you are old. Shrug off these fears and get on with living.
I had a friend a few years ago who died before she was 60. She was always talking about her plans for her life once she was 60. Women of that age, in those days - those days! - could receive a state pension. She had always been a rather bitter woman, a bit angry about lost opportunities, about people she felt had failed her, about her lot in life. She became ill and realised she was going to die. In the last six weeks of her life, she changed. It was dramatic, impressive. Her bitterness went, she put life in perspective and she began to live. From her sickbed. She became wise. She had some remarkable insights. She relaxed. Her family could not accept her demise. She stopped seeing her grandchildren. There was no point, she explained lightly. She taught me by her example, how to live. She appreciated life.
‘We shouldn’t be moaning and criticising each other,’ she said, ‘we should be telling each other how wonderful we all are.’
It was the most important and amazing lesson of my life.
So, I would contend that even when you are ill, dying, or even in pain, it is possible to be happy. It seems to me that life is lived on a higher level, a higher starting point or base. These days I find myself saying things like, ‘Even when I’m miserable, I’m happy’.
My friend had acquired wisdom. Wisdom is not the same as being clever, or intelligent. It is more profound. Even those who are not very clever can be wise.
I learned from my friend that death gives a shape to life. It seemed to free her, once she had faced it.
We need to talk about death a lot more. Sex and death are still taboo subjects. When you are older, these days, you almost feel that sex, or at least talking about it in a nudge-nudge way, is compulsory, and death you must not even think about. But death, or the nearness of it, is what defines us as we get older. A friend of a friend is 84 and is planning a Live Wake. She is having a big party, inviting all her friends and will tell them all what she wants to happen when she dies. That is brave and healthy.
I don’t know about anybody else, but myself, I don’t want to live forever. Already I am seeing history repeat itself in my lifetime. How hopeless and helpless to know that things would change, but only in the way they have before, that nothing is new and that that pattern would be going on and on....
No, I am happy to grow old and have more and more wrinkles until....
Wrinkles! Oh, yes, you develop more and more of them, sometimes overnight even. I love wrinkles my own and those of people near and dear to me. Wrinkles are a badge of wisdom. Mine are my record of love and laughter. When people die, their faces become smooth. They take their smiles with them. Accumulate your wrinkles!
Noel Coward said,
‘How foolish to think one could even slam the door in the face of Age. Far better to be polite and gracious and ask him to lunch in advance.’
Coda
I wrote the above when I was 70, for a celebration of Older People’s day in Cardiff City Hall. Eleven years later, I stand by all I said. As an 81 year old lesbian woman with, apart from my partner of 39 and-three-quarter-years, no visible family support, my views are even stronger. I have concluded that the rejection of my family, over 40 years ago, is, in some strange way, a gift.
There is nothing on the horizon except death, and it is not in the least scary. Rather the opposite, suggesting completion, satisfaction. I have no money, property, car or jewellery.
Why keep anything, for it will all end up in black plastic bags. Or worse. Meanwhile, I am happy, very happy.
Maggie Redding September 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment