Grant Evans in Alert Bay

Some mornings the only thing that gets me out of bed is having to go to the bathroom. The sameness of each day weighs down hard and I wonder “what’s the point?” On other days with the morning sun shining through the crystals in our bedroom window, I awake with purpose, with plans for the day, and I’m glad I’m alive.

Grant doesn’t seem to have his up and down mornings. When I say, “Morning, Grant, how are ‘we’ today?”

He invariably answers, “vertical!”

He stoically ploughs through life (often humming a tune), despite failing eyesight, near total deafness, a bad knee, three metal rods in his hip (he had a fall), vertigo and heart disease. As he says, “What do you expect at eighty-eight?”

I expect more. I had one grandmother who was elderly at age eighty-one and another one who lived happily alone in a walk up flat in Oak Bay. Until she broke her hip. Then broke the other one and died at age ninety-four.

I want to be that old lady, without the broken hip part. I am learning to carry a walking stick because I trip…a lot. I fall in the garden. I’m learning to look where my feet are going instead of barging through carelessly. I’m a slow learner.

A dear writer friend fell recently at home, alone. You can guess the rest. This bright, creative, active woman, apparently suffered a head injury, is now in a care home, no longer able to read or write.

Liz and Maureen and dog Blaze at the river 2022 Liz with a walking stick!

“GETTING OLD SUCKS!”

These are the words an old elementary and high school friend texted me after reading a recent blog of mine. His wife isn’t well; his life is turned upside down. I get it.  To be losing someone you love and being powerless to stop it, must be hell. For him old age does suck. I wish him and other close friends and family in a similar situation the strength and compassion to get through this stage of their life.

But many older people toss those words around when really if they accept that they are in the third stage of their lives, elderhood, that they have it pretty good.

Granted for many people getting old isn’t kind. Things don’t work the same, bodies creak, breath is short, energy is compromised, I can attest to all the above. As educated, middle class, pre-war and post war boomers, as most of my friends are, we are generally financially stable, have raised our children, if lucky retired with pensions and own our own homes. And we hopefully are at peace with our choices, accept and even love ourselves, viewing each day as a gift.

That statement may sound presumptuous. How dare she? Who does she think she is? Of course. We are entitled to our own opinions, and we have no idea what other people are going through. I am exploring one path of gratefulness.

There was a time when a close friend and I realized we were both two paychecks short of being homeless. We joked about being bag ladies. We were young and had no concept of what homelessness meant, as it does in our current society. I don’t take my comfortable life for granted; I keep a gratitude diary. If that sounds overly precious, so be it. I came through the Human Potential Movement of the 1960’s.

My word for the year (it’s a thing), is ACCEPTANCE.

Grant dug out his well-read copy of Joseph Campbell’s, The Power of Myth and pointed me to his (Grant’s), favourite reference to ‘aging like an old car.’

quote:

“The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?”

***

“One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment.”

~Joseph Campbell

From The Power of Myth

I’m not sure if those old car images work for me. I think I’ll stick with acceptance and squeeze the most out of life, while I still can. And yes old age does and can suck.

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~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes

www.osbornebaybooks.com