“age ain’t nothing but a number”

In prior posts I’ve fussed about getting old. Funny thing, really, since I’ve been aging since the moment I was born and for many years couldn’t wait to get older. Certain birthdays served as markers: 16 (drink beer in public), 21 (voting age), 25 (quarter century), 30 (can’t remember), 40 (Big O, woohoo!), 50 (half a century, quietly), 60 (no surprise party, please), and so on. If ageing is normal and natural, why make an issue of it now?

Being closer to death than to birth is a good place to start. Also a noticeable change in attitudes (hardening), libido (softening), and body mass index (approaching obese, on my GP’s computer screen). More and more, especially as I work with people with life-threatening illnesses and those near the end of their lives, I can taste the shortness of days remaining.

My reptilian response has been to resist, deny, object. Yet there it is. I’m 68.6 years old and as the saying goes, not getting any younger. A little while ago I decided to switch from denial to welcome. At one of my volunteer places, where older person with mental conditions live behind locked doors, I’ve begun to spend extra time getting to know a few. I sit and listen; hold hands if that’s what they like, we laugh, and mostly repeat conversations each time we meet. I look in their eyes, watch their expressions, study their movements. We’re aging together.

In a further act of facing the thing squarely, I’ve enrolled in an online course on Health in Aging (Gerontology) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Three textbooks, weekly discussion questions, oodles of reading and writing, delving into the literature, chats online with teacher and class mates, papers to submit. I enjoy the subject and being a student. The structure forces me to look academically at my lived experience and observe others more carefully. Welcome everything, one of my meditation teachers used to says.

the title quote is credited to Jimmy Durante, also title of a song by American singer Aaliyah