Dreading decline

With fewer & fewer younger people having natural, regular contact with the elderly & significantly old - what my mother referred to (being one herself) as ancients - more & more fear the very process of aging, of living long past their body's prime.  

I am still undecided on who has the greatest fears - those who've gone through an older loved one's dementia, Alzheimer's, death by dwindle, or those who've only heard the stories, the stark accounts.

All I know is that my parents' generation had far fewer fears than mine.  My maternal grandmother died after years of senility that practically broke my mother, but I don't recall Mom being fearful of growing old.  

I've been blessed to look forward to whatever lies ahead, to view it as an unforeseeable adventure.  I've had a father & father-in-law who died in their early 60s, Mom Murphy died at 87, Mom at 91.  My brother, Ian, died at 11.  Death isn't predictable, so don't try.

It doesn't take a social scientist to realize that worrying about getting older, dwelling on worst possible outcomes, when you're still young, isn't going to do anyone much good.  Strange, but true - the more we worry about aging when we're young, the poorer our health tends to be when we're finally older!

Research backs up what Mom observed as she turned 90 - that we tend to be more stressed out about getting O L D in our middle years, while our actual sense of well-being INCREASING with age, even with people with ailments or disabilities. 

As Mom put it in a long-ago blog posting, "The toughest years were when my energies were beginning to flag  and my body started slowing down.  The proprium - sense of self -  feels  threatened  as it becomes clear that an individual is far more than just the  sum of physical parts. To get to the light, we have to work through the  darkness.  Moving out of that hanging-on state to one of accepting that the  body is a temporary shelter designed to house our eternal soul could be  compared to moving out of darkness and confusion toward lightness and the  light.  Ideally, the concepts of physical being, of time and relationships,  are liberated as we get older and older."

The more younger people have connection to older ones, particularly the elderly & ancient, the less fear they tend to have of aging.  One of my bold visions for my little hometown is working out ways that more youngers can have regular social contact with olders, elders & especially ancients.  

Once upon a time, it was the norm in our small boro for high school & college girls to make money doing housework, while guys earned it with weekend lawn mowing & leaf racking.  How well I remember & bless my connection with Miss Phoebe Bostock, a delightful ancient who lived in a big house I cleaned every Saturday morning. Over a mid-morning break of tea & cookies, we talked & a new world opened for me, the world of her earlier life, her youth.  If she was alive today, she'd have moved out of the big family house, into our local senior residence, to a nice but small apartment she could easily handle on her own.  

What was to fear about aging when I had such incredible role models as Miss Phoebe as a life mentor?  What are the odds that I'd ever have connected with her other than over the kitchen table, taking a break from cleaning?


Developing strong friendships that connect generations - that is a goal I hold dear to my heart.  Few people mastered connecting across generations as well as my mother.  For her, it wasn't the formal opportunities that created the strongest bonds in later life, but the chance encounters.  How to nurture environments where that can happen?  Ah, that's the rub!

At the heart of connecting generations, of giving youngers enough natural, nurturing contact with the aging, the seriously old & downright ancient, is the image of community.  How is my little hometown different in the sense of community now than it was fifty years ago, if at all?  Is it possible that people with a deeper experience of community have less fear of aging, getting O L D?   

It's pretty nice, being well out of the age where my body seemed invincible.  Today, my feet ache, my knees creak & I wobble on first getting up.  But that doesn't hold me back, as I might have feared in my forties, fifties.  

Who would have guessed that a teensy stroke - a TIA, or "episode" - in Mom's late 80s would speed up her sense of liberation from an aging body, freeing her to experience the duality of a body literally falling apart on her ~and~ a mind & spirit that remained as strong as ever.  I think about a dear older friend - another ancient who is seriously O L D  -  who is slipping deeper & deeper into dementia, whose hearing is getting worse, who just started using a walker to get around, but whose mind & spirit are as strong as Mom's.  Having mental, spiritual strength doesn't rely on having a strong body or even a fully functioning brain.  Astonishing!

What too many youngers don't understand is abundantly clear to anyone who hangs around the elderly, the ancient.  We are not our bodies.  They are temporary housing for our spirit.  

What I learned from my mother, who had a debilitating condition that left her totally reliant on others once she went to bed, what I continue to learn from my friend who can't remember the date from moment to moment, is just this - FEAR NOT.  Don't fear decline, don't spend younger years worrying about what might happen as we age, grow older elderly ancient.  

Research indicates that young people who fret about what will happen as they grow older tend to have more health problems than those who don't.  Self-fulfiliing prophecies.  So, don't.  If you do, stop. Instead, start practicing for a great glorious grand old age, however that might play out.  

To paraphrase my favorite line from the film, Dan in Real Life, I'd tell younger friends, from teens through middle age, that when it comes to growing O L D, don't waste a moment dreading decline - instead, plan to be surprised!