What's it Like to Be Old

What’s it like to be old?   Today an older woman at the gym asked me, “How are you feeling, Bill?”  It’s a question which invites more than the standard, “fine.”   After I in fact made the standard reply she detailed the information that she’s had a partial hip replacement and part of her lung had been removed.   It’s the way we like to talk even though younger people aren’t much interested.

We have the inspiring examples of people like the 101 year old who’s been running marathons, the Willard Scott centenarians, Betty White (90), Dick Van Dyke (88) New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg (88), Robert Redford (76) Sophia Loren, that is the type of people AARP likes to feature in its magazine.   More power to them, I say.  We also have the residents of nursing homes with their canes and walkers.

But most younger people don’t like to think about getting older, nor should they, except as it makes them resolved to live their lives to the fullest.

I have an idea that there’s a duality when we think about our age at least that has been the case with me: there’s our rational awareness that whatever our age, it’s passing, and our emotional sense that we’re not really getting older. 

I actually was rather surprised to discover that I’d gotten old.  I even said to my wife, “I’m sorry for getting old so soon,” to which she smilingly and mischievously replied “You’re in trouble.”   And then there was the witty observation of Tennessee Williams (I think it was he) that “I know everybody has to die but I always thought an exception would be made in my case.”  Or Tolstoy who wrote “Old age is the most unexpected thing to happen to a man.”

So what’s it like?  My dermatologist, as I update her on my general health, sympathetically replies “Old age is not for wusses.”

True enough, but it’s vastly preferable to the alternative.  I try to convince myself that I’m now living with new parameters and not without considerable blessings.   Most importantly I have my wonderful family: my dear wife who has been a pillar of strength, my son, Don, the AP bureau chief in Brussels, my daughter Sue, a web designer in Vermont, my son, Thabie, a piano teacher in Virginia, and my daughter Palesa, a contractor for UNDP in New York.

And the fact that, though I may totter slowly down the street, I still go to the gym every day and I’m pretty sure I’ve still got my wits about me so I can read lots of books.  And I go to church every Sunday and chart with our wonderful rectors.

What I need, though, is more socializing beyond just the gym and church.