Ageing Gracefully

I was going to write this post about ageing and then I saw the first snow drop today so I thought maybe I should write about spring instead.  So, I shall try to write about both.  First about this snow drop because it is the earliest I have ever seen one in bloom.  It is December 28 and this delicate but incredibly tough little flower usually doesn't appear till near the end of January, though I have seen them earlier.  So, this is a lovely surprise, three days after Christmas.  For me spring, not winter,always begins with the Winter Solstice.  The dragon that was swallowing the sun is suddenly and very slowly disgorging it again and slowly the days increase in daylight, first a few seconds a day and then eventually by several minutes. No matter how much it snows or how cold it gets winter is in retrograde and the new life is already beginning.  This is of course very easy to say here on the balmy West Coast where I live because we never see temperatures with wind chill of down to forty below as is currently happening in Manitoba.  Walking the quiet streets of our most beautiful and affluent neighbourhoods here in Vancouver it is easy to think already of Spring.  Not only is the temperature mild at a balmy seven degrees but the grass is every bit as green as on a spring day and the tree trunks positively gleam with the velvet green of fresh moss.  There are already winter flowers in bloom in some gardens.  Even if we are hit with another cold snap and a fresh dump of snow it usually ends quickly, nature recuperates and things again are beginning to bloom.  It is very hard to convince many people of this, those for whom it feels a little bit cool and there are no leaves on the trees, therefore it's miserable and it's winter.  But even if there are no leaves on the trees have you noticed the buds and that they are already getting a little bigger? And that soon, in early January the house finches will resume singing.  Please scroll down to my post "Winter In Two Days" if you want to see an image of this lovely little bird that resembles a sparrow painted red and sings so beautifully.

     Old age can also be a second spring.  First let's think of the word, "spring".  To spring up, or a spring in a mattress that holds you up when you are at rest, or a spring of cold, pure and fresh water burbling from out of the ground.  For now let's forget about sagging and arthritic bodies.  No the years are not kind to the flesh.  Men lose their hair, their stamina, their knees become stiff and they lose their vitality.  It is even worse for women, whose breasts sag down to their navel, whose legs lose their shape and become scarred with cellulite and varicose veins and whose bones often become brittle and frail.  Age can be particularly cruel to the human face wreaking havoc on beautiful young skin that becomes wrinkled, discoloured and saggy.  We hate and fear old age because it reminds us of death and it nags in our ear and in our sleep that we too must eventually die.  This is also why so many of the young shun and ignore the aged.

     I began working with seniors and the dying when I was twenty-four years old. What a lesson in life was beginning to unfurl for me.  I learned to overcome my fear and revulsion of age and to listen carefully and attentively to the wisdom and experience of men and women who had lived through two world wars and the Great Depression, people who had seen so many changes in the world and maintained their poise and integrity.  Some could make me laugh like no one else and many times I would meet and get to know their children and grandchildren and see their features replicated in younger and more contemporary faces.  Even a year before I began this work I was visiting some friends and looking at a coffee table book in their living room about Haida Gwaii.  There was the photo of an aged aboriginal woman and her face with its unique beauty and antiquity fascinated me.  The lines and the wrinkles were like rivers and streets on a map and intuitively I knew something of the seven or eight decades of history and life locked up in that woman's face.  I was at that time fascinated by the theme of age.   A good friend of mine was already in her fifties, the same age as my father and I myself felt a little impatient to see some signs of maturity appear on my twenty-three year old face.  I thought young people to be rather flaky, shallow, boring, and irresponsible and I deeply admired mature people and often sought them as friends.

     I find it interesting and sad that so many people are afraid of age and of ageing.  The cosmetic surgery industry is worth billions of dollars and of course all kinds of celebrities, especially ageing actors are all going under the knife.  Even Sophia Loren the almost eighty year old Italian screen goddess is said to have had some nick and tuck strategically done to make her look like a fabulous, sexy and glamorous seventy-nine year old, though she does deny this, of course.  It is estimated that she must have spent $50,000 on surgical enhancements.  Jane Fonda, who would be seventy-six has also admitted repentantly to having gone several times under the knife.  And then there is Dolly Parton. How could any single square inch of her magnificent surface be natural?  To maintain that cleavage alone on a sixty-seven year old body?  Without the grace of surgery and implants she would be needing knee pads instead of a bra.

     This fascination I have long had with women and ageing and women fighting the years begins with my own mother, a beautiful woman with film-star looks and charisma, she fought madly against the years but only with make-up and hair dye.  She never went in for surgery though she did consider in her early fifties getting a face lift.  She also looked very young for her age.  She told me once that the only time she allowed her hair to become grey was when I was away living in Toronto.  The sight of her with white hair and still being in her forties she found so frightening that she dipped back into the Clairol and even up to her untimely demise from cancer at sixty her hair remained stubbornly and artificially reddish-auburn.

     Then I became intrigued with Marlene Dietrich, first the legend and then the woman.  Like many I was fascinated that she could maintain into her seventies an illusion of youthful good looks and in time, thanks to her daughter's tell-all biography of her mother, the secrets were out and the Great Dietrich was revealed as a fraud.

     All considered, I think it is sad and absurd that so many people, especially women, squander so many billions on delaying the inevitable.  I suppose this can be at least partly blamed on capitalism and the shark-fight competitiveness that characterises almost all aspects of life.  Younger and more beautiful are better because they are more marketable, and marketability grows the economy and this in theory makes us all rich.  Except only a tiny minority, that darned old One Percent, gets most of the pie.  In the meantime, Mom, Grandma and Great Grandma want to maintain their goddess appeal and youthful allure so, as long as they have the means, they will go seeking out rejuvenation clinics because really, who wants to look like her grandmother.  This actually reminds me of some photos in one of the family albums that is in my custody.  There is a black and white photo of my maternal grandmother, in her fifties, walking cheerfully down the street in Regina, dressed in a favourite "town frock" with her little hand bag strategically positioned.  There is another photo of my mother and her two sisters, in their fifties and sixties, taken some thirty to forty years later.  They all look twenty or thirty years younger than their mother at their age.

     We need to celebrate age, not deny it.  The more women (and men) who proudly display their grey or thinning hair, wrinkled skin and sagging jowls with pride the better we will be as a community.  Our elders are greatly needed for their wisdom, life experience and the capacity for kindness and generosity that can only be forged in the fires of life and time and not diluted and squandered out of existence by the vain quest to be redone, remade and redesigned to look as young as their kids.  In fact, I will go as far as to claim that our future wellbeing depends on a place of honour and influence being restored to our elders.  The young have of course the raw strength and energy of youth.  For the greater social good, this force must be tempered and defined by the wisdom and serenity of old age.

     Recently a Toronto artist, I forget his name, did a series of photographs of his mother, a woman in her seventies, completely and unabashedly naked.  I at first felt squeamish seeing these photos, all more or less the same of a slightly overweight crone seated full frontally naked on a chair, her breasts resting proudly on her lap.  Then I thought how greatly she resembled the prehistoric sculptures of the Venus of Willendorf, the original Aphrodite, a goddess of life and fertility unencumbered by the silly disguise of youthful prettiness so characteristic of the Greek new and improved version.  I cannot begin to describe the strength and power that I saw in those photos.

     As for myself, I am already nearing sixty.  I have no intention of disguising this, nor of shaving my balding head or of growing a comb over or buying a wig or toupee or wearing a flattering hat.  I have entered a new spring and the nearer the inevitability of death, the more intense my enjoyment of life, of learning and of growing in wisdom, grace and (I hope) humility.  My advancing years reinforce and renew and in a way are my strength and I will, with God's help, do all that I can to be a resource and a source of good things to people of all ages.  This life that may last another twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty years must eventually end as I simultaneously prepare for the afterlife of an eternity spent in the presence of God and to do everything I can to make life richer and more meaningful and enjoyable not only for myself but for all people in my contact and influence.