Getting Old’s Not for Sissies

I don’t want to get old.

I remember leaving the nursing home, er, I mean “assisted living center” outside of Atlanta where my sweet, charming, 94-year-old grandma lived a few years ago and hearing her sobbing loudly – a horrible, discombobulating sound that I couldn’t get out of my head for days. She had Alzheimer’s toward the end; she had to be reminded who and where we all were and that her beloved husband, Bob, my grandpa, wouldn’t be coming to see her because he had been dead for over ten years. She wasn’t crabby or in distress, though – the disease had turned her into a wrinkled old child: sweet, smiling, happy to have visitors and devastated when we’d leave.

The last time I saw her, that sunny day in December when her sobs echoed down the hall, I thought to myself, “What kind of life does she have when all it consists of is waiting for her dead husband to reappear, hoping for visitors and being crushed every time a visit ends?” Before we were even out of the nursing home’s parking lot, I told my 15-year-old daughter, who was with me, that I didn’t want to live that long. Grandma didn’t live to see another Thanksgiving.

Mom and me

My mom’s the one who told me, “Getting old’s not for sissies,” I think, or maybe it was my dad. I can’t remember. (The memory’s the first to go.) He or she was referring to the decline of their bodies and the health challenges that seem to befall most of us once we hit the big Seven Oh. Did you know that more than 242,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year and more than 28,000 of them will die from it? Did you know that the most significant risk factors for breast cancer are gender (being a woman) and age (growing older)?

To add insult to injury, I just read that although our country’s elderly population has grown steadily, the ratio of geriatricians to seniors is projected to fall from one for every 2,620 Americans age 75 and older today to one for every 3,798 in 2030.

That’s right. If I make it to age 68, I’ll have to compete with an additional 1,178 old folks for the attention of a doctor who specializes in medical care for geezers.

My dad and me

Speaking of my parents, although FDR was in the White House when they entered the world – which means they’re each well into their seventh decade on Planet Earth – I still think of them as the young, hip couple of the 1970s who used to go on long motorcycle trips, knew all of the hot spots and cool restaurants in metro Detroit and vacationed every year on a Caribbean island with a bunch of friends. Now I worry if they drive from Georgia to Michigan for a visit.

I still think of my dad as the guy who always beat me at racquetball and arm wrestling; in my eyes, my mom’s still the loving, 40-something woman who would write my name in Pig Latin on the outside of my paper lunch bag. Now he can’t hear the TV if the volume isn’t deafening, she goes to bed earlier than my kids, and their idea of “hip” is to watch “Wheel of Fortune” during dinner instead of afterwards.

I don’t think the popular adage, “You’re only as old as you feel” is true. We’re expected to behave in a certain way based on what our birth certificate says and are chastened and rebuked if we stray from the norm. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to “act my age” – and another for every time I’ve admonished my own kids to do the same – I’d be sitting on a big ol’ pile of cash and wouldn’t need to order so many magazines in order to compete in the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. (Anyone who really believes that purchasing something doesn’t improve your odds of winning probably also believes Oswald acted alone and Iran’s close to having nuclear weapons.)

I’ve written about or alluded to age before – see “Kwame Kilpatrick Killed Detroit” or “What I’ve Learned in 50 Years” or “I Can’t Complain," for example – and I don’t want to beat a dead horse but I don’t want to get old. What’s the use of spending decades accumulating knowledge and wisdom if you can’t apply it once you’re knocking on Heaven’s door?

Norma Jean

I was born on the Ides of March in 1962, less than two years after Camelot came to Washington. The first Wal-Mart opened its doors that year, Nazi Adolph Eichmann was executed for crimes against humanity, and Students for a Democratic Society finished the Port Huron Statement. The U.S. Supremes ruled that mandatory prayer in public schools was unconstitutional, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her bed, and Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as drummer for the Beatles.

Know how much of this historical information my 12-year-old has heard of? By her own estimation, “less than a quarter of it.”

As Grandma used to say, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, I tell you.



Sources: Prostate Cancer Foundation, Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs, BreastCancer.org.