On Growing Old Without Looking Away

Pat

5/29/20262 min read

There are many ways to embrace aging and I learn more all the time. I was on a Zoom meeting a while back, gathered with longtime friends, joking about our struggles with life and bodies that protest our ambition far too often. We were discussing the spiritual aspects of creativity and courage, when one woman, who is an American expat living in Ireland, began to regale us with her prep for a worst-case scenario.

“Picture this,” she said, “I’m in a nursing home, demented. What? I’m supposed to lay there and listen to God-awful country or Irish music all day? No way! I’ve put together my own Spotify playlist for the occasion. I’ll have instructions that it be played for me and damned if I’ll stop there. I’m putting together pictures and collages to hang on the wall so when the staff work on me, they’ll know the woman I was.” She said this smiling, with tears in her eyes.

Ireland had recently been hit by devastating storms. She was tired of it all and coming to grips with the destruction as symbolic of the continual loss we face during aging. We’ve all been there, picturing the end, tired of letting go, not wanting to face one more loss. Still, I can’t imagine this vital woman will ever end up demented. She’s a brilliant published poet, a former astrologer for Sage magazine, and a walking literary encyclopedia. She keeps the gray matter exercised. And yet, we never know for sure what awaits us.

But look at what she’s doing: she’s embracing the images of decline and coloring them the way she wants. She’s taking narrative control; designing a creative outcome: my body might be lying there demented, but these symbols are how I walked my life path.

Death happens. Decline happens. It takes courage to face the possibilities and creativity to decide how to make scary options acceptable. If we never have to be in a nursing home - with our own Spotify playlist - so much the better, but if we do, then at least we can be prepared.

~ Pat