Those of us in early old age – late-50s to mid-60s with a cut-off date when the Gold Card drops at 65 – regard actual old age with horror. We fear the worst. We have seen the worst, in our friends and family – people who lived lives of great vigour and good sense, but then gone ga-ga, gone to physical hell, gone down the rabbit hole of stupid ideas.
Terrifying! Death is one thing, the dark inevitable; actual old age is another, more challenging thing, a game of chance. Many win it. They remain alert, mobile. Many others through no fault of their own, through genetics and illness and misfortune, lose it. “The horror,” Kurtz whispers in The Heart of Darkness. “The horror.”
Three of us in early old age gathered at my house late one night recently to discuss the issue. Our combined age was 189. The next morning, each of us felt at least that old. There was considerable alcohol involved but no drugs were consumed – no one had any, and the only dealer any of us knew was a friend of a friend of one of our kids.
This is how actual old age begins: isolated from the wider community, unable to rely on tenuous connections. Robert Lowell’s famous poem about his mother, “afraid of living alone till eighty”, ends with an image of the poor old soul sitting by the window, “as if she had stayed on a train / one stop past her destination”.
Those of us in early old age are not yet regulars at the funerals of friends, and many of us are now too old to be regulars at the funerals of family on account of the fact they died years ago. We are between funerals. We think about our own, sometimes, but not in any great or morbid detail – we merely wonder about the guest list and the playlist. Something classical might be regarded as too pompous. Something funky might be regarded as too lively. As for the guests, our only concern is: what if no one turned up? “Nothing happens, nobody comes,” wails Estragon in Waiting for Godot. “It’s awful!”
