Octogenarian Blues

Guest Column by Miss Carol Buchanan

NOTE: Hi Y’all. Happy Monday! Today my friend Carol is EIGHTY-ONE YEARS OLD! I’ve had many excellent crone role models over the years, but Carol has been (and remains) my most steady-on example of how to age with grace. I have leaned on her and gleaned from her. I have rejected, often, her unsolicited and solicited advice, only to later admit to both of us that she was right. She has exhibited profound patience and compassion with and for me. She was one of around three humans that Norris loved to be around. She’s just so freaking awesome. Carol is also a wonderful writer—we met many years ago when she signed up for my writing workshop. Last week when the writing group met, she read a piece that I so love I asked if I could share it here. She agreed. Please enjoy it and please join me in wishing her a Super Happy Birthday! Carol—I know you’re reading this. Thanks for everything. I love you.

Octogenarian Blues       

By Carol Buchanan                                 

On the first day of April of 2023, I was involuntarily inducted into an exclusive club in which membership brings both good news and bad news. Good news is I’m still here to be an active member. Bad news is I’ve now been rolling down this bumpy road for eight decades. And my 1943 vintage vehicle is beginning to show some signs of wear. A few of my gaskets have blown, my gears grind against each other and there are some troublesome leaks. And although a few replacement parts on the chassis are an upcoming option, a bit of the hardware in my circuitry is beginning to short out. 

Did I think I would feel like this at eighty?

Did I think I would look like this at eighty?

Did I ever really acknowledge that if I was lucky, I would someday be eighty?

No way. It was always far from a real concept, a non-reality. I never once tried eighty on for size. It was beyond my comprehension. Even as I watched my parents lose mobility and slip into their decline, I never acknowledged this could happen to me. We delude ourselves into believing in our own immortality. At twenty the road goes on forever, but by a cruel twist in the divine design, the power of our human consciousness allows us to observe our own evolution and to ponder our ultimate dissolution.  And as we watch our own decline we develop a greater awareness of our inevitable fragility. As someone who has always been resilient and strong this has been a difficult pill to swallow.

Other birthday milestones have scorched a bit as they approached, especially the landmark years, but I see now, those were simply a warmup, only boot camp for the real battle. Reaching forty, fifty, even sixty, those were the fun birthdays, with black armbands, silver balloons and margarita machines. All while we pissed and moaned about getting old. We didn’t know Jack shit!

In retrospect, forty is prime time, and the decade of my fifties was the best time of my life.  Even reaching sixty-five had the perk of Medicare and a new monthly benefit check.  But eighty…eighty is the killer. It’s the point of no return on scaling the mountain, while simultaneously tumbling over the other side. It is the relentless and insidious arrival of the infirmities I have strived to conceal. And a brutal confirmation of where this parade is headed.

As a child I held a definitive picture of what an eighty-year-old was like. Family gatherings always included a rolling brigade of ancient old women, with shriveled lips, propped up in chairs just waiting to plant a cringe worthy kiss on our reluctant little faces. I watched as their daughters, who were my aunts, rolled them into a dark corner somewhere like a coat check. They seemed to have lost all spark for human interaction and some of my younger cousins were a little frightened of them. Maybe it wasn’t them we were frightened of, but instead we caught a quick glimpse of coming attractions, and that was so scary we buried it deep.

The nuns and priests schooled me well in the survival skill of delayed gratification. Endure the suffering and reap the reward, they taught. The problem is, I was always struggling toward some unavailable goal. Some carrot dangling on the horizon which I could never quite grasp. They forgot to teach the part about living in the moment. In teaching me the discipline of working for and awaiting my reward they neglected the part about enjoying every freakin’ moment, because the future is not guaranteed.

So here I am, eight decades in, finally going after that long-delayed gratification.

And the good news is: I have actually found a little piece of it.

Aging is the process of uncovering the person you really are. As you begin to assess the consequences of the choices and chances that have made you who you are, you gradually become astute in the observation of your own behavior. You notice certain emotional triggers can send you spiraling in sadness or rage, and you realize these reactions often come from your own outdated programming.  Mining for your true self involves peeling away the parts that were only a disguise, a costume for the character you played. The best part about becoming authentic is that there is no longer an image to maintain. You will delight some and disturb others, and none of it will affect the truth of your actual being. I have discovered that the expectations of others were the very bars I used to build my own cage, while continually tap-dancing for approval and ardently performing whatever role I thought was assigned.

Fortunately, there is little play acting in my life today, mostly because I no longer require so much applause. By lasting into these later years, I have become more attuned to my true characteristics and worked to shape them more to my own liking.  I think to figure out who you really are, you must go through some things that partially demolish you. And when I pay attention, and allow the process, my true nature begins to take shape like a magnetized jigsaw puzzle.

Kirk Douglas who lived to be 103, had this to say: “It seems as if only now I really know who I am. My strengths and weaknesses have been simmering in a pot for all these years, and as it boils, it slowly evaporates, and all that’s left in the pot in the end is your essence, the very stuff you started out with in the beginning.”

A big part of this distillation process is discovering how little the small stuff really matters. I have ruthlessly become more SELF-focused, and as my priorities shift, I find I have fewer fucks to give, and I begin to avoid persons and circumstances which destroy my peace. This is my time to say yes to the things that bring me contentment, and no to the things that don’t, because life becomes more precious when there’s less of it to waste.

Things don’t have to be complicated anymore. I have arrived at a place where I want to stick with what’s relevant and honest. There is no time to drudge through and roll around in all the muck that keeps us from being content. I am learning to let go of having to always be right. Appropriating blame is no longer satisfying and all the minor irritations I allow to ruffle my feathers are not worth the effort. Once I began to unclench, once I began to quiet the riot in this brain and release my tight grip on the controls, I finally grasped that I cannot change another’s behavior. I can only change my expectations and my attitude about it. This simple truth has made a huge difference in my level of contentment. And I’m not proclaiming to be a master of maintaining this clear perspective, but I have learned that life flows more smoothly when I am able to focus on my own behavior instead of wishing others would change theirs. We can only change our world by changing ourselves, not by trying to change the world.

I am happier now than I have ever been. I say happier, meaning I am living each day on a more contented level. I have reached the elevated level in life of having my days be mostly what I want them to be. Seldom is my calendar filled with the tedious tasks from another lifetime ago. I can loiter for the whole morning in my coffee chair, making choices from my throne with each evolving moment. Life is good. My surroundings are serene and beautiful. I have a wonderful space that brings the outside in, and I drift through my day playing house. The image my mirror reflects is magical, and through it I see a montage of all the characters and personas this old body has played out over the decades. Those eyes I see reflected still see the me that was seven years old, and sixteen, and twenty-one. This is still that me. This is the me of now. And all the stories and scars of my journey reflect in my image. My tall and slender body still resides somewhere under all this flesh. And the graceful flow of the easy movement of my youth still seems possible while standing stationary before my image. Getting old continues to usher in one insult after another. The sky may be falling but I’m learning to adapt.

Over the past three fearful years, when hospital beds were full of gasping, dying patients, when refrigerated trucks were rolled in to store body bags, and when every cough brought terror, I struggled to adapt a new attitude on the ultimate certainty of my own demise.

Once I acknowledged the inevitable destination lurking on my horizon, I set about finding a way to assure my psychological survival.  I searched for a way to release the angst which kept me from falling asleep each night. I came face to face with the reality of life and death.  And by learning to cope with the vulnerability of my own mortality it appears I have developed a new faculty. After living most of my life with an eye-rolling cynicism, and an Eyore state of mind, I discovered that in order to escape the darkness I had to engage in something akin to hope. Hope is a tedious undertaking. It involves a continual negotiation between optimism and despair.  But hope is the machete that slices a path through the jungle. Hope is what keeps our boat afloat.

And to borrow the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “The practice of mindfulness is like a boat. And by practicing mindfulness you offer yourself that boat. As long as you continue to practice, and to remain in the boat, you will not sink or drown in this great river of suffering.”

So here I am…trying to stay in the boat…trying to stay in the moment. All the while knowing and remembering that just around the bend that great rushing waterfall is still waiting.

Ode to Aging

One small flaw in the great design

Is we get to watch our own decline

The tiny ant simply follows his path

Never pondering his approaching wrath

He doesn’t watch while his parts wear out

Or notice or care what it’s all about

Yet while we carry a lesser load

We allow  our fears to implode

We miss the view along the way

While trying to hold our demons at bay

So put down that load and like the ant

Enjoy each day until you can’t

NOTES:

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Love,

Uncle Spike