This is when we come to terms with our lives and prepare ourselves before we drop off the twig. We can dismiss our earlier life as irrelevant and go roaring off into the unknown, enjoying each day as it comes. We can become bitter and twisted with self-pity and regret and make life as miserable as possible for those around us. Or we can just sit in front of the TV until Death raps on the door.
The main problem with old age is the uncertainty. We don’t know if we are going to live to be a hundred or if we will croak before seventy. It’s a lottery. We also don’t know if we will be in good health to the end. No use living to one hundred if your last thirty years are filled with pain and misery. There is a lot to be said for living your life as though each day is your last. One day you will be proved right.
However fit we may be, our bodies don’t do what they used to. It’s harder to tie shoelaces, makeup disappears into crevices, getting out of a chair sometimes takes hours. The remote control becomes indispensable. A cold suddenly becomes dangerous, we stumble on stairs, our hearing and eyesight become unreliable. We go to more funerals than weddings.
Not everything is bleak. Grandchildren are growing up and making the same mistakes we did, which is comforting. Occasionally, one of them will want to know about the ‘olden days’ and you can bore the pants off them for an afternoon. You watch your middle aged kids run around like headless chickens and you realise you are part of a pattern much bigger than your own little life. Most of us are on a conveyer belt. They pop you in a box at birth and as you slowly move along, everything you need is dropped into the box; family, career, experience, comedy, tragedy and all the other trappings of life. Then, towards the end, the belt speeds up and you and your memories are tipped off the end into oblivion.
Your partner dies and you can’t understand what has happened. You have had a lifetime to prepare for this moment, but you did not expect it. Even if you had expected it, you would not expect it. You thought you would both live forever. Now it is confirmed – you will not. You will die. Could be tomorrow, could be in ten years. Whatever. You face life alone. Your kids, grandkids, great grandkids all love you, but they have their own lives. Your remaining friends are islands, just like you. You are number one to no one but yourself. Irrelevant.
One day Death knocks on your door. “Time’s up. No need to pack.” And as he carries you off, you relax and look back on your life and wonder, “what the fuck was that all about!”
Whaddo I Know? 