Musings on Old Age

Yesterday, a close friend messaged me to say her mum had died earlier this week.

Made me think.

Suppose we’re at that age now - when the tier above us starts to give way.

I was reminded of my grandma’s funeral 11 years earlier.

91.

A ‘good’ age.

We’re not a close family, long gone are the times of staggered sittings at the extended kitchen table. I’d passed comment on how these days, we only seemed to gather at funerals.

“Wonder who’ll be next!”

A cousin piped up.

“It’ll be one of us”

said Aunty Sandra matter of factly, glancing over at her contemporaries.

“Well there’s none of that generation left now, so it’s got to be one of us goes next.”

As she said it, her voice did that awkward lilt when you plan words to take on a certain tone but find yourself outpaced by emotion as they’re delivered. It was followed by a nervous laugh, a crazy laugh. The hysterical squawk of psychiatric wards.

There was an uncomfortable acknowledgment, perhaps the way lobsters in tanks feel when they see others removed and calculate their dwindling odds.

I contemplated saying something reassuring;

“well, none of us ever really know, do we?”

But given that if it wasn’t someone from that generation, it would mean the next - children or grandchildren - that wouldn’t be much of a comfort, would it?

I looked around at my mum’s peers, my aunties and uncles and their spouses.

I sized them up in turn in a ‘most likely’ kind of way. I silently tallied up their score sheet, allocating marks for age, appearance, medical history and what I knew of their lifestyle. Won’t be my mum. I reasoned. She’s the youngest…..and besides, females usually outlive males……

But then again, she was the smallest, the slightest…..most vulnerable?

I found myself willing her on the way a naive farmer’s daughter rallies behind the runt of a litter of pigs.

And then, my mind flitted to how they’d all looked in my childhood in the 70s and 80s. What powerful adults they had all seemed at their peak - opaque skin and full heads of hair.

The way they’d stood, too. Towering above both us kids and their own parents with a swagger that didn’t know it was swagger. Youth lampooning old age simply by being itself.

It’s funny the things that adults do that impress you when you’re a young child too, isn’t it? I recalled the way their strong teeth made light work of irksome plastic tags on clothes. The way they plucked ring pulls from Coke cans, releasing that virgin swirl of dancing gas that ah-ed its freedom like a genie.

They’d driven cars, held down important jobs, holidayed abroad and cooked what seemed like banquets. They’d embraced the tech of their era - kitchens dinging with microwaves, rattling with soda streams and food processors. In the living rooms, they’d pointed their remote controls and revelled in their VCRs.

You don’t notice ageing so much in your grandparents’ generation because your grandparents always seemed old. They were old when you were born. But seeing your parents, your aunties and uncles deteriorate, now THAT’S an eye opener.

But little by little, they do.

We all do.

I think back to those 1980s cartoon versions of them, formidable and unstoppable. My uncle throwing down his huge copy of The Guardian as though it were a great newsy superhero cape, my mother twisting open jam jars with Popeye-like flourish.

These days, their lives have all been impacted or eroded in some way. Some take multiple meds, some no longer drive or travel overseas. Some have canes to get around. The lovingly prepared suppers are reduced to ready meals for one because ‘it’s easier and cheaper than all that messing about’.

It’s always interested me how life spans are contraction and expansion. We branch out - grow and grow and grow - taking up more and more physical space with our own families, before contracting again, downsizing. The space we live in, so often seems to mirror our opportunities and possibilities.

11 years on and all the relatives who attended that funeral are still with us.

But today, as I think of my friend mourning her mother, I am reminded of the relentless march of time.

Sometimes life jolts to a halt, other times it tapers off like a slowing fairground ride. For so long the carousel horses race as one bright, beautiful blur, but as the ride slows down, on close inspection we notice the chipped paint, the pained expressions.

Before old age and death claim us, they circle us like marauding hawks, have us look into their bloodshot eyes, know them better. They land upon our shoulder and whisper in our ear.

And every now and again, they hiss hot truths.