Age Well
When people tell you to age well, they usually mean to exercise or stay fit, or be mobile and mentally spry. I have no intention of talking about any of that.
This is likely the last piece specifically about my father and his passing, or my family in general, but I wanted to talk about aging well. I talked briefly about the idea of shrinking, when a kitty I loved very much passed away. I was able to watch as her world rapidly went from being my house, to one floor, to one room, to the bed, to just lying in my arms. Physically her world reduced as her capabilities reduced.
This is related, but different.
I have watched my siblings grow older, I have watched my father grow older and die, and I have watched my mother grow old and seen dementia take most of her away.
They shrunk in different ways, and a way in which I very nearly walked myself. My wife saved me from it. You see, as they got older, most of them stopped planning to do anything.
My father worked, as my prior post noted, 2-3 jobs at a time throughout his life. He did not have hobbies really. He had his work, his family and his wife. He enjoyed his fishing, but he did that with us. He enjoyed his time near the ocean or on the water but again, he did these with us. It was not until we had all moved out, and he had retired, that he decided he had time to garden. He started gardening long before he was getting too old for doing it. It was a hobby he started as soon as he could, so it could continue into his later years even in a diminished form.
My mother cannot be blamed for not creating something to carry her into older age. She quilted for decades, but eventually she got too confused to do the geometry or math to make the quilt pieces. My dad helped by doing it with her, then for her, then helping her cut out the cloth, but eventually she couldn’t handle the needle and thread anymore. Similarly, she lost playing board games, playing cards with the family, reading fell by the wayside, and even something as simple as doing puzzles faded. She forgets why she is even organizing the pieces all face up.
But after my father died and I was spending some days with her, I saw an example, magnified in her, that I saw in my siblings to a lesser degree, and in many people, I know who I have seen age.
There is no preparation today, or in relative youth for “what am I going to do when I get older?”
I have heard it quoted other ways: “There is only so much golf a man can play.” Or, “There is only so much bridge a girl can handle.”
The idea is the same. Everyone thinks retirement or “being done with the 9-5,” is going to be a vacation, but vacations aren’t fun for very long for most people. There needs to be something else. But if you think you are going to start writing that novel when you are 70, you’re unlikely to be right. If you think you are going to start learning how to garden at 70 and build something that is everything you wanted, you are underestimating how long it takes to learn a skill. If you think you are going to learn to master the piano, or violin, or woodworking, read every book you have been meaning to get to... etc. etc. etc. You are probably wrong.
You won’t have enough time left. And you will feel the press of time on you as you try. I watch time and time again as people age ahead of me as they fall into depression because they don’t have as much time as they thought they would when they retire. They don’t have as much energy as they thought they would, or they can’t learn as much in time. Because they didn’t start soon enough.
If you do not start the hobby you think you want to carry with you to the end long before you retire, you are doing yourself a disservice.
You don’t need as much time as you think you do. But you need to dedicate time every day to the thing you want to become. It was why, in part (luck plays its role, too), my father managed to be so happy to the end. He loved the things he did, and he started them as early as he could, and a solid 20+ years before he died.
He loved caring for my mother. (95% of the time. Caring for the elderly with dementia is hard.) He loved his gardening. He loved reading his magazines.
If you think you don’t need a hobby, I will introduce you to one of my best friend’s father. He is 80, with no hobby at all since his wife died. He sits watching TV for so long at a time, he has developed bed sores from not getting off the couch. He can get up; he just has no reason to do so. He is a kind man, and I like him, but he has chosen a path where he reached old age with no reason to be here.
It is what I saw when I spent time with my mom. She exists in a bubble of time several minutes wide, in a present moment detached from her life, or any life. She has no reason to get up tomorrow because she cannot and does not pursue anything. It has been thrust on her for biological reasons, but how many people find themselves there by accident?
Please go find your hobby. Find the thing which will carry you from today to your last. Pick that thing carefully knowing that you will physically decay. One day getting up from the chair will be hard, and one day your mental acuity will slip. I am not saying to go gently into the night, but I am saying to plan. I have watched too many people get old without a plan, and their world shrinks to something akin to “why bother?”
And it is sad to watch.
It would have been sadder to live.
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