Question from a friend: “You write about hassles in your life, things you don’t like about the world or about aging. Why don’t you tell us about what you do like about your life and being old?”
How do I love my life? Let me count the ways! I love poetry so it is fitting that I paraphrase poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I love that I am still here. Yes, aging means there are more aches and pains, an increasing number and severity of medical problems, more trials and tribulations. I have worries about my own old age and that of those I care about. I worry about my country and the planet. But even on really bad days, I try to find things in my life or surroundings to appreciate and love.
One of the best parts of aging is that, despite the losses, most of us retain a long lifetime of memories. I catch the glimpse of a child’s photograph and cannot help smiling. I see a crooked ceramic bowl made for me by a schoolchild nearly 50 years ago and feel as proud as I did then. A friend’s phone call or witty email can lift my spirits.
I love the outdoor landscape. I lived at sea level until I moved to Tucson nearly 40 years ago. In my sea level days I loved standing on the shore of the ocean or a great lake to see the vast horizon. I still love the ocean and walking along a beach but I fell in love with the mountains surrounding the Tucson valley. My husband called the Catalinas “Marilyn’s mountains” because of all my ooh-ing and aah-ing.
My favorite things out of doors? The glorious sunsets, clouds, saguaros, the spring burst of yellow, the birds and birdsongs. Also the fascinating wild creatures I see in my yard or on my walk — from baby bunnies to coyotes, from spade-footed toads to Gila monsters.
Indoors? I love reading a new book, especially a great work of literary fiction, and also old favorites including my annual reread of “Little Women.” Music, especially live music, is my cultural drug of choice. My favorites in alphabetical order are Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, True Concord, and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra plus opera both live in Tucson and live at the MetHD in a movie theater. Cinema has been a passion of mine since I lived in Manhattan and could see old and foreign movies free at the Museum of Modern Art. I love a good movie at the Loft. But on tired days I can stream at home.
I am addicted to taking courses at the Humanities Seminars Program at the University of Arizona (I have taken well over 60 of them) to feed my still insatiable curiosity. And I love what I am doing right now, writing!
I am grateful for my loving family and the man I love. Though I am the last of my generation except for two cousins, I have two children, two stepsons, two daughters in law, one son in law, five grandchildren, and two young great grandsons. My many friends enrich my life. I have lost several friends recently and miss them a lot. But I am grateful for their memory.
I thank goodness for my mobility, creaky as it is. I push myself to do exercises so I can maintain being mobile. I can see and hear albeit with assistance. I can still drive but, unlike many elders I know, I am willing to relinquish this when I feel it is not safe just as I decided to give up hiking when I reached 80 and stepping on a ladder when I reached 85.
As part of getting my affairs in order, as they say, (I smile at the phrase and confess to my readers that I never had any affairs because I was too busy!) I wrote directions for my memorial service to the executor of my estate (I never had a manorial estate either!)
Please read the following passage written by W.N.P. Barbellion, pen name of Bruce Cummings (1889-1919), British diarist who died young of multiple sclerosis.
I came across this in a book by David Lodge called “Deaf Sentence.” I was at one of my several book groups (I love book groups, too!) when I realized that this quote exactly expresses my feelings about life and death. It is an “honour” and a privilege and a pleasure to live and love. It was while I was writing this I noticed that Cummings and I were both born on September 7, a heart-thumping coincidence!
“To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time and when I am dead the matter which composes my body is indestructible — and eternal, so that come what may to my ‘soul,’ my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.”
Am I frightened of what is to come? Absolutely, not of dying but of a lingering, debilitating illness. I know I am on the downward trajectory of aging and there is only one way to get off. But why dwell on sad thoughts? I try instead to focus on being happy to see that the sun has risen on another day.
