Sunshine and Shadows of Life’s Afternoon

‘I‘ll give you another 15 years,” my doctor said cheerfully as he went back around to his side of the desk.

“That’s pretty good,” I thought, relieved as my quick mental arithmetic came up with the number of 90. “That gives me a comfortable buffer between my age now, and the age when I’ll have to confront the terrible prospect of dying.”

As he turned to face me, however, he wore a wry smile, “But I’m not going to put that in writing,” he chuckled, his smile widening to a grin. We laughed. ‘Who knows?’ was our common thought.

So, at the tender age of 75 years, I’ve started to contemplate the questions, ‘Am I old? …. ‘Have I been old for ages but just didn’t know it yet? …. Do my children think I’m old? …. Do my grandchildren think I’m old? ….. To this last question, I’m sure my grandchildren would give a definite yes! A resounding yes.

What about the people in the street, the office workers on the tram in Sydney recently? The young men and women in well-cut suits and business attire who jumped up to offer me – the white-haired guy – their seats? Did they think I was old? Well, they must have, and they were particularly persistent and polite too because, when I looked around the carriage and pointed to a scatter of vacant seats, they still insisted. I’m not laughing at them for this, in fact I’m totally in awe of their social graces. It’s just that the image I have of myself, capable of standing in a tram carriage and holding the stainless-steel pole for a few more city blocks, is not the way in which I may be seen by others.

These thoughts crowded my mind recently on a long car trip from coastal NSW to Ceduna on the west coast of South Australia. In this journey we passed across the Hay Plains, a vast expanse of semi-arid land where the flat terrain stretches all the way to the pencil-line of the horizon far off in the direction of eternity somewhere. ‘Eternity’…. hmmmm, yes, …. Eternity. Now that’s a concept that’s got something to do with getting old. So it was that there was time to think as the car made its progress imperceptibly towards the edge of the world.

On the drive I also thought about a TV program I had seen in the previous week. It was an audience discussion about body enhancement – you know, face-lifts, eyebrow-jobs, chin-tucks, botox injections and butt-lifts being all the go. Ruminating on this program I realised my attitude towards ageing differed from that of many on the show.

The main assumption was that the whole concept of growing old was a terrible thing, something to be avoided. Associated with this was the idea that conformity with some form of youth-beauty was the peak desire in life. The problem in my mind was that many of the concepts of youth beauty struck me as manipulated by others. One fascinating exchange came when  one of the speakers was pressed on the question, “What will you do when you eventually get to an age when all the Botox and the butt-lifts just don’t work anymore?” The respondent answered with a glib statement that (words to effect) “Oh well, I’ll be old then and it won’t matter anymore.” It seemed that an assumption in his answer was that, once you were officially ‘old’, you were of no value. You just don’t count. You don’t even matter to yourself.

As the car trip continued I concluded that my basic thoughts about growing old were ideas formed way back when I was a child.

“This incident shocked me. This was against all my assumptions
about life; how long you should expect to live,
at what age was it ‘normal’ to die“

An incident from about the age of seven or eight years stands out. We lived in a quiet and leafy suburban street in Claremont, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. At the bottom of our street, perhaps 150 metres away, there was a pedestrian crosswalk on Stirling Highway. Nothing traumatic usually ever happened in our street but, one day, a boy of about my age named Gilbert was hit by a car on the crossing and killed. This incident shocked me. This was against all my assumptions about life; how long you should expect to live, at what age was it ‘normal’ to die, and so on. Added to this was that Gilbert was someone I knew, not very well it is true, but I knew him. ….. and he was from my suburb. Maybe I was dimly aware that other boys I didn’t know, kids from far away suburbs, but not those closer by. I remember being disturbed by this and coming to the passionate desire that, “Whatever happens in life, I want to grow up to be a fully grown man. I want to live a long life.”

So now, at the age of 75, I reflect positively on the fact that I have achieved old age. I welcome it and am glad about it and want to keep growing older.

Still, there are amusing contradictions in my attitude. If my doctor were to tell me, “David, you have terminal cancer and only a few months to live,” my first thought would be, “How unfair! I’m too young to die.” A contradiction, I know, but there it is.

It wasn’t just Gilbert’s death that gave me the desire to be old one day. It was the example of ‘being old’ that I saw from those at the other end of the scale – people who were already old. In our suburb and in our circle of family and friends there were lots of old people and they were vibrant characters – some of them a little bit eccentric at times but wonderful examples to emulate. Maybe people were more stoic then than now, but they seemed just fine with the ageing process. They were cheerful and positive, and the thing that I somehow ‘absorbed’ from them was they had all experienced long, eventful and successful lives. In the days of my childhood, many had been through the Great Depression, the Second World War and the general difficulties we all face in life. But here they were, old people with stories to tell and proud of how they had lived their lives. “I’d like to be like them one day,” I thought.

Let me give you an example of one of my earliest encounters with advanced age from the perspective of a boy in the 1950s. This man was Captain Ulbrich, the honourific because he had been the captain of merchant vessels who had sailed the world for decades. He was so old that he had started his seagoing career in the days of sail – the era of tall ships – in the 1880s or 1890s, when there were still steel-hulled, four-masted sailing ships on the trade routes.

There were some appealing things about the Captain’s character, a little eccentric perhaps but, for some reason, I have always been drawn to this characteristic in people. Firstly, there was no compromise on the use of the rank – Captain – that was his status and all we children were briefed that he was to be addressed in this way. Secondly, there was no compromise in his form of attire – a thick navy-blue serge pair of long trousers with a similar tunic. This was more suited to a gale in the North Atlantic than the heat of a West Australian Summer. Thirdly, he was as deaf as could be and often sat out on the back porch of his family home in Kalamunda with the radio blaring. Thank heavens it was a large residential block of many acres. Due to the deafness it was necessary to shout when talking with him. Not talk loudly, not just shout, I mean SHOUT!   He would communicate by shouting back.

“He died about a week later. This may be an understatement
but, to me, this shows what a determined man he was.
He just kept on going to the end. I think of him now and then
and admire him for that.”

Finally, he was determined. He was slow-moving and probably arthritic but part of his daily round was to plod determinedly up the hill to the Kalamunda shops to buy the newspaper and then return. He did this in all seasons and would spend the rest of the day reading every word of the West Australian. One day, I have no idea how old he was by this stage, he did not go on his daily errand to buy the paper. He died about a week later. This may be an understatement but, to me, this shows what a determined man he was. He just kept on going to the end. I think of him now and then and admire him for that.

There were many similar examples, of both from women and men, but for me to list them all might become tedious and repetitive. I admired them all tremendously and value them even more as I enter my own ‘old age’ thing. Each of them has been a kind of guide as to how to grow old.

For my part, like the old people I knew as a child, I’ve had a full and eventful life. I won’t go through it line-by-line but it has never been boring. There have been times of achievement and times of failure; times of reversal and times of recovery, there have been times of contrast between then and now. An example of contrast is that in my late 20s I was a skydiver almost every weekend and did over 350 jumps. Today I cannot imagine jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane and have now satisfied myself with lawn bowls at my local club. I enjoy it.

So how about the 15 years my doctor gave me at the start of this essay? I guess that if I bump into him today during my Saturday morning round of garage sales and coffee shops, I might call out, across the street. “Hey doc! About that 15 years you gave me. Any chance you could stretch it out to 25? This growing older vibe seems to be agreeing with me.”

But then, my mind wrestles with itself. I caution my thoughts, “I should possibly put some sort of caveat around that wish to be old for another 25 years?” Although I feel healthy, the logical part of me reminds me that I have a heart pacemaker, a bypass and a valve replacement. They are all working fine right now … but who knows when they might bugger-up?

And then there’s the problem of memory, which worries me the most. The doc tells me that I present well, and I think I do, but almost every day I lose a word or forget something. The person closest to me notices it too. I seem to be losing it ever so slowly, frustratingly and embarrassingly. It’s at the early stage but it’s there. Things might not be all that rosy if I ever get that full 25 years.

So maybe I should settle for the 15 – and, even then, that might be hopeful.

Maybe I should even form an attitude based on a much shorter time frame. What say I simply focus on today and continue to be happy and healthy for as long as I can, just like the old people I knew when I was a child?

Yes, that’s it! My attitude to growing old.