On Aging with Grace and Chutzpah!

I have always wanted to be an old lady. (Of course, the closer I get the less appealing it is some days). No, I have not always wanted grey hair, sagging skin and fading eyesight. What I have wanted is what I have seen, so often, reflected in the older women in my life, both family and dear friends. It is peace, calmness, and a confidence in the fact that whatever life throws at them, they can handle it, because they have already, so many times. It is a faith in a power greater than themselves and a deep belief that one way or another things always, somehow, work out. It is the ability to stop worrying about the little things and to rest on the accomplishments of a life well lived. It is chutzpah! Yes, I want to be that eccentric old lady. You know, the old lady in the famous poem “Warning” written by Jenny Joseph in England in 1961.

I will never forget the first time I read that poem. I thought immediately of my grandmother, Bertha, a woman who had survived so much and still enjoyed her life to the fullest. Even in her eighties she would never think of leaving the house without her lipstick and earrings! When I was born, my mother was ill for a long time, and my grandmother took over my care. When I was seven, my parents divorced and my mother went back to work full-time (a very brave life choice in the 1970s). My grandmother, again, was there for me every day after school. When I was young and newly married, my grandmother could no longer care for herself, and I, without thought, jumped in. She lived with our family for the last three years of her life. I remember one day she told me that when I was just a little girl, I had promised her that I would take care of her when she was old, because she had always taken care of me. She said she wondered at the time if that would really happen, and it did. That’s the way it is supposed to work isn’t it? Ideally, that is what families do.

Yet today, families are spread out. Most of us no longer live in the towns we grew up in. Often children only see grandparents a few times year. Sometimes grandparents are the ones who have picked up and left, retiring to a more moderate climate. Decisions about how best to care for our parents in their older years have become so much more complicated than just moving them into the family home, as we so often did in years past. My own mother is now getting to that age. She moved to Maine when she retired, nine years ago this week, to be nearer my children and I. She and I have talked often about what we will do when she is no longer comfortable living on her own, how we will combine our tiny city apartments and look out for each other. I try to see her future, and hope to make it an easy transition for her. In her eyes, I also see my own future. She is a survivor, my mother.

What I have discovered, is that those women who are the most contented in their later years, are those who have walked the most difficult paths in their lives. The reason they know they can survive anything is often because they already have! They have been brave. They have been unconventional. They have taken what life has handed them and done the best they could with it. They have made good choices and they have made bad choices but they have always found the courage to make those choices. They have had good luck and they have had bad luck, but they have not let life make them bitter. They have learned when to say they were sorry, and when not to apologize for anything! They have lost friends and lovers. They have faced illnesses and disasters. They have held newborn babies and sat beside the deathbeds of loved ones.  They have raised children who brought them both heartache and joy, and they are still here, still going!

The women I have always envied, the confident older women, my mother and grandmother and many more, they know the secret. They know that the minute we are born we are heading towards the day we will die and that every, single day in between is precious. They know that it doesn’t matter if our car won’t start or we’ve burned the meal we were cooking, or if we’ve had a bad day at work. They know it doesn’t matter if we have what the neighbors have. It turns out it does not even really matter how our life partners fold the towels or whether the toilet paper rolls over or under. It doesn’t really matter. Life is too important, too wonderful and too short to waste time on worry, anger or regret.

This week I seem to have stumbled upon multiple stories about aging that left me once again asking the questions. How do we care for our parents? How will our children care for us? I read with horror, a local story of elder abuse. I read with sadness about the death of Andy Rooney, who continued to write and work and tell the world the truth until just four weeks before his death at 92. With a heavy heart, I read a story about author Dudley Clendinen, whose book “A Place Called Canterbury” told a beautiful story of a man taking care of his elderly mother in her last days. Clendinen, himself, is now the one dying, of Lou Gehrig’s disease, far sooner than anyone would wish. During this ordeal he is doing weekly broadcasts on living and dying. His choice on how he will end his life, before the disease takes its toll and his dignity, shows how complicated the decisions about our final days can be.

This is what middle age brings. It brings a view of the past in one direction and the future in the next direction. It is like spending time on top of Cadillac Mountain where you can see both the sunrise to the east and the sunset to the west and they are both beautiful and breathtaking. I sit, satisfied in a job well done after almost three decades of raising children. Yet, there is no time to rest on these accomplishments. No, life always has new challenges ahead. What will the next few years bring my mother and me? I think we’ll try our best to really remember that every day is a gift, whatever each day holds. Whatever choices we have to make for the future, I think my mother and I will be wearing more purple, sipping more wine and looking for a local place to buy her some satin sandals and long, lovely gloves!

WARNING

by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people’s gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

To read more about Dudley Clendinen go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/opinion/sunday/10als.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

To find out about local resources for aging in Central Maine go to: http://www.eaaa.org/

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, November 5, 2011.