BEHIND THE SCENES

Aging gracefully
ALFRED P. DIZON

How time flies. It seems just like yesterday when I was a kid catching birds at the mountains in Sagada, swimming at Bokong Falls or making wooden cars at the house basement.

Now, almost everyone I meet has a kid or grandchildren. It seems people I know are dying. The past months, I’ve been to numerous wakes of friends and acquaintances. Some classmates I’ve met, I hardly recognized. It seemed they aged too soon with bulging bellies and arthritis.

We’re all getting old. A twenty-two-year-old wrote an article recently about the plight of not being a radiant teen-ager any more. And an eighty-year-old can find there are things he can’t do as well like he used to.

Rose was seventy-four and demoralized. She felt that she had no future, no real place in anyone’s life. That she didn’t fit in: on the other hand, she couldn’t stand old people”; on the other, she was sure young people couldn’t stand her.

John Dale, an “age expert” figured out five basic things were bothering her: erosion of physical appearance and strength, other people’s prejudice against the aged, unwillingness to accept increased dependency on others, loss of certain friends and loved one, and approach of death.

All these problems, Rose argued, were impossible to overcome.

But, at Dale’s request, they tried to work out a helpful approach. As a start, he suggested that Rose ask herself the following ten questions:

1. In what ways do you discriminate against other people? For instance, do you condemn your husband as a “poor old man” or talk differently to older people from the way you do to younger ones? Do you say that other people your age who try to have a good time are making fools of themselves?
2. Do you have ways of buying friendship from younger people? Volunteering gifts and services you’d never expect them to offer you?
3. What favors or dispensations do you grant the young – and not yourself? Do you, for example, always show up on time, but “understand that the young people have better things to do”?
4. Do you believe you’re too old to understand certain things (politics, perhaps, or unisex clothes or the new movies)? And do you use this as an excuse not to pay attention what’s going on around you.
5. Do you conceal your personal problems because you feel you have no right to bother young people?
6. You try to establish yourself as an expert on life and give constant advice to young people?
7. Do you dwell on the past and ask sympathy because you life is over?
8. Do you criticize the modern world, calling it immoral or decaying? Do you maintain that you have no place in it?
9. Do you invade the privacy of the young, trying to live their lives instead of talking and thinking about your own?
10. Do you demand that young people listen to long speeches that you make – and get upset if they interrupt? Are you really listening to what they say?
These are all ways, Dale said, in which an older people (and thus poison his mind about himself) or ask indulgence because he’s too old to be held responsible. And an older person might always keep reinforcing the idea that old people – starting with him – are no good.

Rose realized, among other things, that she was ashamed of her husband, who used a walker to get about. She tended to pick on him. Particularly if there were younger people around. “Can’t you hurry up?” We’re keeping the kids waiting.”

She also recognized all the favors she did for her children – and the way she wouldn’t accept any favors or even appreciation from them in return. “Don’t thank me,” she always said. “I’m your mother.”

Finally, she saw that she belittled herself as much as her husband. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m just an old woman.” Simultaneously, she usually managed to ask for sympathy. “A lot of my friends are gone. I don’t have much more time.”

One she recognized some of these patterns in her life, Rose could hardly wait to change them. She loved her husband and didn’t really want to embarrass him; she had just gotten in the habit of being so ashamed of old age that she felt embarrassed for him. Once she stopped putting him down, it was easier to stop putting herself down – and also easier to believe that their age was no disgrace.

Dale suggested she cut down on favors – and start making plans of her own. She hadn’t gone out on weekends for years; she wanted to be available “in case the children need me.” One of her hardest decisions was the resolution to book herself solid on weekends for a whole month – and stick to her appointments. After so many years of refusing to do things for herself, it was time she started.

One of the things Rose started was a class in gardening, which as old hobby. This helped turn her thinking around, from the belief that “it’s all downhill form now on” to the idea that she could still do new things, make new progress.

At this point Dale and Rose looked back at the five impossible problems of old age. They were still real difficulties, but Rose had certain ideas for coping with them successfully. They talked about the problem of losing good looks and perfect health. Rose, she stopped taking care of herself shortly after she turned forty “What’s the point?” she figured.

Now, at seventy-four, Rose decided there was some point. Not in trying to look forty again – that would backfire and make her more ashamed of getting older. Just as buying a toupee is probably the worst way for a man to adjust to baldness. But Rose made up her mind to buy some new clothes, get her hair done, go for a long walk now and then for exercise. And she started looking for ways not to let other physical limitations stop her – for instance, buying a magnifying glass to her read recipes instead of giving up on cooking.

As for prejudice against old people, the decision she’s already made not to participate in it herself-gave her a sense of perspective. While she recognized that there would always be some people who were prejudiced against the aged (frequently) because they dreaded growing old, she stopped assuming that everyone hated old people – and more important – that such hatred was justified.

And she decided that being dependent of her friends and children wasn’t all that terrible after all. She’d done a lot for them the past forty-five years, and they honestly wanted to act generously in return. But she was making it as hard as possible, sometimes acting as if an offer to drive her somewhere or run an errand were an insult instead a favor. And always bringing out the self-pity. “I’m so old, I’m such a bother.”

It wasn’t easy for her, but Rose managed to force herself to start accepting favors – and accepting graciously. Once she did it, her horror about the idea went away, and she actually found it was pleasant to know that some people cared enough to go out of their way for her.

Rose’s parents were dead; so were her brothers, some cousins, and friends. One of her sisters was dying. She associated these people with youth and with good times; there was reason to mourn their passing.

But not reason to turn it into a trauma, to refuse to enjoy life from that day on. After her favorite brother died, Rose had gone into permanent, if low-key, mourning. Around this time she stopped going out and making plans for the future. She eventually came to see that this was not an inevitable, proper, concerned response – but a choice, and an overreaction.

At first, when she started to rejoin the world, she felt a vague sense that she was betraying her brother. But she also realized that he wouldn’t have of approved of the kind of person she’d turn herself into. He had been in his seventies when he died – and much younger somehow than she was no. Perhaps it made sense to become more like him, instead of acting half alive.

As she faced up to her brother’s death, Rose started thinking and talking openly for the first time about the idea of her own death. Which didn’t magically removed all fear and sorrow, but did reduce the terror of the very thought. This probably the most important lesson that self-creation can teach us: refusing to face something – anything – always make it much, much worse. Admitting that you will die – not refusing to think it or pretending that your children give you immortality – can give you a sense of your own courage, and an impulse to make the most of your life right now.

It took some time for Rose to work all this out, but she did it. Even though she started at age seventy-four-and she believed at first that she was too old to do anything new, she managed to change her whole life. It is easier if you start young. But it’s never too late to give life new promise.