In the New York Times Sunday Review, Oliver Sacks writes of his upcoming 80th birthday. The piece is called "The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)"
Sacks is looking forward to his next decade. For me, just beginning my retirement, such a zestful statement offers encouragement for the decades to come.
In this culture, which promotes youth and hides the aged, celebrating aging sparks an inquiry. What has the aging individual to anticipate with zest, a younger mind might ask? And Sacks answers that he's glad to be alive (or happy not to be dead, its pessimistic alternative). If that's the best that can be said, it's barely reassuring.
1. Waiting for the End
My father's father, a grandfather I could not have known since he died before my birth, succumbed suddenly from a heart attack at age 45. When the decade of his own forties commenced, my father expected to die the way one waits for a visitor, almost impatiently wondering at what hour she would arrive. From time to time, he would complain plaintively, like a child, that no one would care if he was gone. Of course the longed-for denials ensued, but he was not comforted. It took a change of scenery--to that mecca of the retired, Florida--before he abandoned his vigil for the grim reaper, and took up his life once again, regaining his youthful tennis prowess, with the trophies to prove it, well into his late sixties.
Rediscovering the passions of youth could be one way to move zestfully through our aging. Isn't that how retirement communities are sold?
2. Recurring Events and Gratitude for Unexpected Pleasures
This year, on the long and leisured Independence Day weekend, we had enjoyed a walk earlier in the morning, from our car to the locale of the Freedom Celebration Parade, an annual event involving the entire community, from scouts to high school bands, from activist groups to politicians, from large corporations to a lone man pitching for a business idea.
Most Independence Day celebrations end in a retreat to air conditioning after near heat exhaustion. Hours later, however, we sat on our patio, taking our time with our barbecue and our adult beverages, as the sun set over the pond and an ever-so-slight breeze cooled the already ambient air. The sky faded from blazing to pink-streaked to amethyst, reflecting clouds and colors into the still water beneath. In an hour, fireworks would be lit.
We both said, "Life doesn't get much better than this."
And yet, so much more there is to anticipate with pleasure, awe, and excitement: Meals shared, the rituals of recurring celebrations, or the more momentous joy of welcoming a new grandson (now two weeks old) and watching him grow.
Yes, the so-called circle of life still pings us with its pleasures.
3. Decay and Surprise
"At 80," Sacks reminds us, "the marks of decay are all too visible."
Younger people seem to think that those of an elderly age have thrown off the blankets of zest and lie, naked as a newborn, waiting for death. The physical pains and ailments afflicting the aging appear more present than joy, love, or gratitude. How complicated such visions prove themselves to be.
Before the mirror, I barely know myself. My hair's grown thin, and taken on a wiry texture. Of course there's the telltale gray (which a hairdresser hides). Beyond the obvious, the body's given in to gravity, sagging and paunching where, just a mere decade ago, it was taut and strong. Muscles atrophy even where they're often used; at times I find it difficult to open a jar. Inside, though, there still lives the younger woman, the one who carried two children through a grocery store (one screaming, one drooling). The memory of physical feats undertaken and conquered lives, as if I could still bench press my own weight, the way I did back then. It's why weekend warriors keep ERs busy. We can't entirely believe we've faded, or deny what we notice about ourselves, growing older.
Recently I read Christopher Hitchens' memoir, Mortality. Hitchens suffered through stage four esophageal cancer, perishing after less than two years of treatment. (As he was fond of saying, when you say 'stage four' it's important to note that there is no stage five.) Regardless of the diagnoses of highly trained and efficacious physicians, not even he entirely believed in his own demise. It is just too difficult to imagine not being here, on earth, in one's all-too-physical life, aware of the erosion of one's body yet enduringly caring about it, and all of the people and things one loves. Hitchens' book went unfinished, published with his final chapter notes. He had plans when death surprised him.
If we are lucky enough to have our faculties when retirement approaches, what declines also surprises. Anxieties over petty matters appear to cease. Feeling slighted, feeling stupid, feeling surreptitiously judged and found wanting...these thoughts and feelings fall away likes dead skin cells, quietly in the privacy of our own welling maturity. Such waning comes as a relief.
4. The Meaning of Time
Sacks confesses, "I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time...", a thought that's been on my mind since my first day of retirement. Even after nine weeks, I am still in "recovery" mode, spending my days in odd amusements that no one else might appreciate. Are such dalliances a waste?
If time is the only resource we can never renew, the implication is that one must "spend" it profitably. And yet I wonder, why should we consider the time of our lives--particularly retirement years, when we are no longer selling our time for money--as losing value as the clock ticks, when in fact one can only live one moment at a time? Is the financial metaphor truly apt, when we cannot see how much is in the account, and know what percentage we are 'spending'?
I've been calling this period of non-accomplishment and relative solitude a kind of healing, after the thousands of small cuts and larger wounds visited upon me through those decades of work. Surely those old injuries required care-taking, since they've never fully healed. Beginning a new period of my life as a whole but scarred person appeals to me. I've slowly taken on a gradual life review, reading old journals, reviewing photographs, gathering genealogical records, and writing short notes to myself about specific periods of my life, wondering and pondering, as if coming to terms with decisions made (or punted) might in fact inform the future. Perhaps it's more like this: Now that I am older, I can see the panorama of my life, its earth, water, and sky. Knowing where I've come from helps me see the path ahead.
Since we can't know how much time we have left, we live by
packing in activities, enduring what we must, or savoring the few and precious. Or all of these.
5. Completing a Life
Sacks says, "I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever “completing a life” means." Ah, yes, I've felt that.
Now that the life review's begun, I have confidence that I'll come to the point where the future unfolds like a lovely white cotton sheet, ready for me to create its art, to paint, or draw, or color it into its individual pattern. But it will never be 'complete'. Like any art, even one well-contemplated, well-planned, and well-executed, tinkering could go on forever. There comes a point when the artist simply stops. And, for some of us, a certain sadness reigns at the ending of a piece. Satisfaction comes less from completion than from paying attention, moment by moment, to the unfolding, of art and life.
No comments:
Post a Comment