At 80 years old I do not think I can be criticised for writing about ageing. It is a subject that tends to be avoided because contemplating the frequent miseries and indignities of age is not exactly the most pleasant way of passing time either in solitude or in company.
Yet ageing is increasingly becoming a dominant fact in community after community. The 20th century added 30 years of life expectancy in the developed world. And in America, for example, it is estimated that 80 million people will be over 65 by the year 2030. The trend is the same world-wide.
So a lot of writing about the greying of society will have to be done as the years go by and the implications become clearer and clearer. Will not the young, for instance, increasingly rise up in revolt against the larger and larger share of resources taken by those who have retired and no longer contribute much to the creation of wealth? Already there is a phrase gaining currency: “generational scape-goating.” It is likely to happen more and more.
But I leave such deep and serious considerations to the historians and economists and social commentators. I do not envy them their tasks of analyzing and forecasting and planning for what seems to me a long-term civilisational problem – global ageing – as formidable as global warming.
I prefer to remember what the Nobel Laureate, Doris Lessing, who died recently at age 94, wrote: “The great secret that all old people share is that your body changes but you yourself don’t change at all.” And one thing that has never changed for me since I began to appreciate the beauty of the written word 70 years ago is my love of poetry.
So I am content in this piece about the much dreaded subject of getting old simply to share two lovely poems which I have recently come across.
The first poem is by Gibbons Ruark and in it I recognize truths that I am sure are universal.
Lightness in Age
It means not having to muscle your bag
Onto the baggage rack for the flight to Dublin.
A girl your daughter’s age will do that for you.
It means the boy distributes the groceries justly
In your carry-alls so you’ll make the car without
spillage.
Those lightnesses are not to be taken lightly,
But more than those it’s the many-faceted lightness
Of the goldfinch feathering down at morning,
The chickadee’s darting blur for the one seed
He spirits away and devours discreetly,
And it’s the tenderness of a long-known kiss
Touching your mouth or eyelid or anywhere
With this new lightness, its flickering back-lit by the
glow
Of that consuming first one fifty years ago.
And the other poem is by the great Margaret Attwood, better known as a novelist than a poet, and in this one also there are many, including myself, who will know whereof she writes.
Blizzard
My mother, sleeping,
Curled up like a spring fern
although she’s almost a century.
I speak into her topmost ear,
the one thrust up like a wrinkled stone
above the hills of the pillows:
Hello! Hello!
But she shows a clenched resistance
to waking up.
She’s down too deep, a diver
plunged into dangerous caverns:
it’s blank in there.
She’s dreaming, however.
I can tell by the way she’s frowning,
and her strong breathing.
Maybe she’s making her way
down one more white river,
or walking across the ice.
There are no more adventures for her
in the upper air, in this room
with her bed and the family pictures.
Let’s go out and fight the storm,
she used to say. So maybe
she’s fighting it.
Meanwhile I watch a spider
laying a trail across the ceiling,
little dust messenger.
Meanwhile the clock ticks and the day shrivels.
Dusk sifts down on us.
How long should I stay?
I put my hand on my mother’s forehead,
stroke her wispy hair.
How tiny she is now.
How tall she used to be,
how we’ve all dwindled.
It’s time for her to go deeper,
Into the soft blizzard ahead of her,
both dark and light, like snow.
Why can’t I let go of her?
Why can’t I let her go?
Naturally as I age I feel more for the very old who are often very sick and/or lost in their memory and senses. Such men and women must never be abandoned. There is a Jewish ritual called the Tahara, the preparation for burial, in which those who enshroud the dead must take good care never to turn their backs on the body. We must never fail to do as much for the living very old among us.
