Page 8 - Seniorstoday November 2023 Issue

from the real Age of Grief, which comes self and now self is one of the factors of
later and hits harder because it is largely
hidden. And we’ll be expected to endure it
in silence. Middle age is sometimes referred
to as The Age of Grief. It’s when we first
glimpse our own mortality; we feel youth
slipping away into the past, when the young
people in our lives begin to assert their
independence.
Last week, I met a very old friend after
50 years, we recognised each other in one
second. She was extremely extremely
pretty in her youth. Now she had become
a little bent, grayed and much wrinkled. I
experienced a rush of bafflement as I looked
at her in disbelief at how she had aged.
We talked of the good times, the carefree
living, the singing, the dancing and then
I asked myself what happen to me? The
tight chest now has two man-boobs, the
tight butt is now a bag of flour, the biceps
thru the sleeveless singlet are now flabby
armpits, the mop of hair has considerably
disappeared and there are two deep lines
on the either side of face, wrinkles they call
them. Do I have a sense of who I was back
then and is that person still a part of who I
am?
On the way back home, I thought of my
own wild youth, the lying, the cheating, the
two-timing. I realised that I had travelled
very far from my younger self then I had
imagined. This realisation came with a jolt
of emotion that felt like a bereavement.
Disbelief at the distance between the young
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this emotional turmoil. I suppose I now
have to negotiate my own relationship
with time and reach an acceptance on the
distance travelled. Youth was a chapter
of exuberance and joy. It was a place I left
behind and a place I held close to my heart.
Flabby armpits – how can you exercise the
armpits? But the fact is that our bodies are
capable of more severe betrayals than mere
flabby armpits. In time they may cause us
to be exposed in skimpy, front-opening or
back-opening hospital gowns under the
all-seeing eye of the CT scanner. They may
deliver us into the skilled, ruthless hands
of a surgeon. Our very blood may speak of
things we will not wish to hear.
One by one, we will relinquish the driving
licence. Perhaps we will have to give up
the freedom of walking without the aid of a
stick, or walker. This loss of independence
and the feeling of helplessness is really
difficult. The emotional impact of this is
very profound. At that time it doesn’t really
matter if people see you with a walking
stick. Someone is bound to comment that
he is very old and uses a walking stick.
Besides there could be other dietary
restrictions imposed by conditions such as
diabetes, and the invisible disabilities of
diminished hearing and eyesight.
A failing memory, one would think, must
be the final straw. And yet, what seems to
be the actual final straw is the situation,
reported time and again, where an old
person feels ‘unseen’, or ‘looked through’,
and for indefensible reason finds himself
being missed out in a family function or the
inconvenience of being a piece of furniture
that has lost its utility. The wound deepens
when you are referred to as ‘Buddha’ old
man and it’s worse to be told off in many
words that you are irrelevant. Sometimes