Old Age
Old age has become cruel.
In recent years I have seen old age take away the ability to walk from an 87-year-old man who loved nothing so much as being in his garden. These days he can only look at the flowers and plants as his wife wheels him through the yard, no longer able to get down on his knees in his beloved dirt. He rages against his disability, but the only place he's comfortable now is in a swimming pool's blessed weightlessness.
Old age turned a once supremely competent woman who could skin a rabbit or can 50 lbs. of tomatoes in an afternoon into a feeble, needy shell of her former self, so frail and anxious that when her daughter left the room for even a few moments she called her name in fear that she had been left alone.
Old age has made a mockery of a woman who once possessed a tart but loving sense of humor by turning her into a nasty shrew who cannot remember from moment to moment what she has said or what the plan for the rest of the day is. Loss of her memory has made her angry, and I can't say I blame her, but if she only understood how her temper has made her grandchildren fear her, she would be desolate. I'm rather glad she doesn't know.
When I was a child, old age was a time of simply slowing down and mellowing. The lady across the street who lived to be 97 encouraged me to play her grand piano and finger the scrimshaw her long-gone whaler husband had collected. The lady next door still made cookies in her 70s and invited me in to sit with her and her kindly husband while we sampled them. The 76-year-old lady who babysat me whenever I was sick very cheerfully taught me to knit when my left-handed mother couldn't teach my right-handed fingers the motions, My 73-year-old grandfather loved to hold me on his knee and point to all the beautiful women on TV, saying, "You see that pretty girl? She's my cousin." All of the June Taylor Dancers, every last one of them, were his cousins.
If only I could see old age through the trusting eyes of a child, instead of the reality of an adult.
In recent years I have seen old age take away the ability to walk from an 87-year-old man who loved nothing so much as being in his garden. These days he can only look at the flowers and plants as his wife wheels him through the yard, no longer able to get down on his knees in his beloved dirt. He rages against his disability, but the only place he's comfortable now is in a swimming pool's blessed weightlessness.
Old age turned a once supremely competent woman who could skin a rabbit or can 50 lbs. of tomatoes in an afternoon into a feeble, needy shell of her former self, so frail and anxious that when her daughter left the room for even a few moments she called her name in fear that she had been left alone.
Old age has made a mockery of a woman who once possessed a tart but loving sense of humor by turning her into a nasty shrew who cannot remember from moment to moment what she has said or what the plan for the rest of the day is. Loss of her memory has made her angry, and I can't say I blame her, but if she only understood how her temper has made her grandchildren fear her, she would be desolate. I'm rather glad she doesn't know.
When I was a child, old age was a time of simply slowing down and mellowing. The lady across the street who lived to be 97 encouraged me to play her grand piano and finger the scrimshaw her long-gone whaler husband had collected. The lady next door still made cookies in her 70s and invited me in to sit with her and her kindly husband while we sampled them. The 76-year-old lady who babysat me whenever I was sick very cheerfully taught me to knit when my left-handed mother couldn't teach my right-handed fingers the motions, My 73-year-old grandfather loved to hold me on his knee and point to all the beautiful women on TV, saying, "You see that pretty girl? She's my cousin." All of the June Taylor Dancers, every last one of them, were his cousins.
If only I could see old age through the trusting eyes of a child, instead of the reality of an adult.