“Few people know how to be old.”

– Maggie Kuhn

When did we stop thinking it was all right to grow old?

I remember my childhood in a multi-generational household.  My great-aunt was a presence in my family before I was born, and she remained a vital member of our family until she died at age 93.  She told us stories of our mother’s life as a child.  She told us stories of her own childhood.  She integrated us with our history, and we listened.  It was just understood that older folks deserved our respect and our attention; and it followed naturally that they deserved our love.

There is something that has changed, and it began with our parents’ generation.  Perhaps it is the result of advances in medicine that have extended our life expectancy.  Perhaps it is an offshoot of our youth-worshiping culture that no longer reveres the wisdom of the elderly.  We live at such a high rate of speed, with one foot in today and the other in tomorrow, that we no longer cherish the connection with generations past.  The message to our older generation is, “keep up, or be left behind.”

My great-aunt was my age when she traveled from Illinois to see my older brother shortly after his birth.  A heart attack while she was visiting changed the course of her life; and she remained in Pennsylvania, putting down roots in our family for the rest of her life.  It seems hard to believe, in an age of statins and bypass surgery, that something so treatable could have been a life-altering event in such recent history.  At 61, I am considered middle-aged.  When my great-aunt was the same age, one heart attack made her elderly.

All these changes have given us the idea that we may be immortal.  If we exercise often enough, if we take our vitamins, if we play by the rules of modern medicine, we can go on forever — or at least for a very long time.  I have no problem with skipping some of the less-pleasant symptoms of aging; but as I watch my parents struggle with the limitations they face in the later years of their lives, I can’t help but feel that we have lost touch with what it means to grow old.  What makes it even more difficult to comprehend is that our elderly often live removed from us in senior communities or assisted living homes.  We see a lifestyle that contrasts with our own when we visit their world, not the next step on the continuum that is life.  We have the feeling that we should hide any signs that we are aging, for fear that we will fall off the edge of living into an abyss of old age.

Because I started having children at age 21 and finished when I was 38, I have had the delight of being a grandmother for more than fifteen years, with babies still arriving.  Now that I am 61, I find it more difficult to keep up with scurrying toddlers that it was when I was 46.  As I tell the little ones, “slow down, Grandma’s knees don’t run that fast any more,” I realize that we may be selling ourselves and our children short by pretending we will stay forever young.  There is something sweet in the act of a little one coming back to take my hand and walk alongside me.  Perhaps it is the birth of compassion — her first chance to give something to the people who center their lives around her happiness.  Perhaps it also is the birth of acceptance for me that there is a part of me beginning to slow down — and the reward is having a tiny hand take hold of mine in a loving way.  I have great memories of the days when I could run for miles and not tire; but I also can see the gift in my rickety knees that allow for such a tender moment.

Few of us know how to grow old, because we live in a time when old age is seen as failure rather than an achievement.  Let’s learn from our parents’ struggles to lead the way back to a time when we learned from our elders.  Let’s be gentle leaders for the younger generation and teach them not to fear living all the way to the day they die.  Let’s learn to grow old.