The Future?

Life is a funny old thing. We have no choice but to accept the call and take one step at a time, in a straight line from the beginning to the end.

We are born, and our parents give us the best start that they can. Why? So that we may grow strong and healthy, and happily too. We acquire simple skills that will serve us in our one-step-at-a-time journey, and we increase that list with each day. Our parents fret about schools and the opportunities that they may bring. Why? They want us to achieve fully and to realise some of our potential. Why? So that we can obtain some life-skills, gather a few marks on paper. Why? To get to the next good school and take that process on to the next level. More marks on paper, more life-skills (if we are lucky and live in the right places, and born into the right families). School follows school, followed by college maybe. We gather skills and marks so that we can leave school or college well-equipped to either make use of those life skills or hone them further at a university.

Childhood is about learning, growing and acquiring, so what of adulthood? To me it seems that it is about earning, growing and acquiring. Why? Either to have the best 'stuff', or raise a family in the most conducive environment possible (or both of those things, if really fortunate). If childhood was done well for us, we hope to be healthy and vital, equipped to move through a working life and meeting its challenges. We start at the bottom and over a generation, hop gently 'upwards' in the means by which we provide for ourselves and our families. Junior status gives way to senior status, and with any luck, we take in the scenery as we go. 

Adulthood, like the roller-coaster ride that it is, goes up-diddly-up-up, and then goes down-diddy-down-down as bits of our mortal framework start to to have other ideas. We display signs of ageing and we experience the onset of the rigours of increasing age. We may be a fighter-pilot, we may be a CEO of a multi-national corporation, we may be the man who sweeps the street. We will have raised our families, given our children the best that we could. Why? So their cycle starts. If all goes as we plan, we reach a point where we stop being a General in the Army or the one who sat at Till 21 for as many years. We become pensioners - old together. The only outward signs of who we were is perhaps where we now live. Our bodies start to fail and life takes its own toll on us. 

It seems to me that it as that point that we become rather irrelevant. I read an article recently about one person's experience of old-age care, as meted out to their grandparent. It made for difficult reading, not because I didn't recognise its laments, but because I did. I am glad to say that my experience of care-homes and residential homes for the elderly in Aylesbury has been nothing but good. I visit some, and they are good places, often fraught with the constraints that life imposes upon them too.

What I do recognise, and something I pray will pass me by (some hope), is that there comes a time when a lot of us will need to be cared for in a home. If we are really lucky, we will be in our old age - not a flippant comment, as I know of a woman in her fifties who has resided in such homes for three years already, and is likely to live until she is in her eighties (but that is another story). Boredom is a big thing in places like that. Not necessarily through fault, but because of failing bodies and an inability to be and do what we once were and did - all the while retaining vital minds the same as we were in our twenties in some cases. Imagine being a former spitfire pilot, a veteran of the Battle of Britain, when all you can do is sit in a chair and watch Loose Women? A gentle life as a reward, or a curse for those who reach old age? Whilst I pray that I live a long life, see my family grow and their families too, I also fear what extreme frailty and old age bring with them. 

I also know that there is more that I can do as a man in my 30s to help those in that situation.

The Hope and Joy of Old Age

Old Age Ain't For Sissies! ~ Do Not Resent Growing Old... Many Are Denied The Privilege.

This is the strap line for the eminent and wonderful blog offered by The Old Geezer.  I read it awhile ago and it has haunted me ever since. It is a simple statement of the obvious - though it is only obvious when it has been stated, if you catch my drift. 

I live with a list of people who were close to me and who died 'young' - and among that number my father (who never reached the age that I have), my wife's two best friends (both of whom died in their teens), at least three school peers and others around the periphery of my life who are nonetheless important and worthy of passing mention. Too many youngsters reach the end of their lives before those lives have been tested by the normal expectations of time. We utter platitudes about 'quality over quantity', age not being important, love being the only thing that counts, blah blah blah. Tell any of that the mother of a teenager who has just succumbed to Hodgkin's Disease. You may find yourself the proud owner of a dented wind-pipe. 

This is all compounded by the fact that, after my father died so young, my mother met and married a man considerably older than she - more than 30 years older. My dad has now died, having done so far too soon but at a good age in his eighties - and a sainted hero to me he will always remain. 

Anyway - the thing is this, we live in an age where age is derided. We put our 'elderly' in safe places and then often leave them to it, complaining about their unreasonable demands for more than a passing visit once a month. Children's telly programs paint elderly people as dotty flat-cap wearers who are to be patronised like benevolent centenarians. We slap goo on our faces in the effort to pretend to the world that we are not in fact aging, heaven forfend. We paint more goo on our faces to hide lines - often the lines that frame a kindly wise face, if only we took courage. We do the 'Cheltenham' thing of dressing a decade younger than we actually are (trust me, it is the case in Cheltenham). In summary, we hold on to the fervent need to not want to get old - like age is a curse, a malevolent stalker who will 'get you in the end'.

Age is not a failure. Age is not a fading into irrelevence. Age is not a reason to be ignored or overlooked. Churches are also guilty of this too - how many funky Youthies work day and night to provide for the kids that they are chasing? In church life, we seek new blood and young blood like bloodhounds, and we often overlook what we politely term 'loyal pew fodder' - in other words, the older members of our community, often the most loyal, regularly the most frequently disregarded. Actually, when (if) I am an incumbent, I will pursue toddlers and dodderers. Both are God granted gifts of age. Let the church up the road bust a gut over the teenies and the yummies! Hurrah! My church will be full, mate!

As Geezer says, older age is a priviledged gift. It is not a right, it is not inevitable. I wonder if, given the chance at life, my young friends and father would embrace old age like the Spanish embraced the World Cup trophy: as hard fought, deserved, a blessed gift - thankfully.