It’s not
that we don’t like old people, or that old people aren’t
likeable; but rather we don’t like to be with them because
they are ugly. I’ll say it again. Most old people –
octogenarians, nonagenarians -- are ugly. Claude Levi-Strauss,
in Tristes Tropiques, reports that the Brazilian Nambikwara
tribe use the same word for 'old' and 'ugly.'
Who isn’t
put off or unsettled by hollowed-out fleshless cheek on the
bone, eyes and lips lost in the warp and woof of 1001 wrinkles,
a face smothered in dark spots, white spots and moles, blood-shot
features glaring out of a skull draped in a thin membrane
of skin hanging onto the jaw for dear life? Never mind that
old people walk slow, talk slow. We don’t want to be
with them because they speak a truth we don’t want to
hear: that death is but a whisper away, a whisper that speaks
loud and clear and shakes us to the core of our being. In
them our future is writ, and we look the other way.
Of course we make
exceptions for the old people who once looked after us, loved
and still love us: grandparents, parents, maybe a close friend
of a parent. Then there are those exceptional old people to
whom we are exceptionally attracted; to the wisdom and worldliness
they radiate such that we imagine ourselves being just like
them when our time comes.
Anyone who has
witnessed someone die from a wasting disease (cancer, Parkinson’s)
knows that death is ugly. Old people are a stark reminder
of that eventuality. We, who in our youth flitted from one
hope to another like bees from flower to flower, don’t
want to be with people who have lost all hope, for whom the
future has shrunk to a handful of small pleasures: the next
meal, a card game, an old song, a visit from a family member
or friend, waking up in the morning -- and for some not waking
up. The latter would be my mother who has been trying to die
for the past two years. Her all-too-regular solicitations
have turned me into a disobedient son.
Old people, who
were once young, know that they are ugly, that younger people
don’t want to be with them on that account. Personal
finances permitting, some of them opt for botox or collagen
injections, or cosmetic surgery. They’re not trying
to cheat death, or pretend to be what they are not: they simply
(unapologetically) don’t want to be rejected because
they are ugly -- or should we say aesthetically challenged.
When we speak
of the ugliness synonymous with the old, we infer an aesthetic
scale whose intervals are visual indicators of one’s
proximity to death. Old people are ugly because they are closer
to death than young people. We duly note with an asterisk
that the inspirited skeleton has always served as the favourite
prop and life-line of the horror genre.
Some old people,
consciously or otherwise, put on significant weight because
the adipose fills in the wrinkles and furrows, puts flesh
on the rickety bones. But there's a ‘weighty' health-price
to pay: of the few who make it to old age, most don't stay
around very long to enjoy their blushing look and younger
company.
As reluctant
as are the young to engage the death masks all old people
wear that only death can vanquish, they are just as eager
to attach themselves to what is eternal in life.
Since only art
survives human folly and the rise and fall of empires, the
living look to the arts to assuage their fears of mortality,
be it through the purchase of a timeless work of art, or the
financing and construction of a monument, or museum, or shrine
to which they lend their name, convincing themselves that,
by association, what is eternal in the work will confer the
same to them. And of course there isn’t a creator who
doesn’t secretly hope that his book, painting or song
won’t survive her/him.
Thespians invest
their time and energy and exceptional empathy in characters
that are immortal: a Hamlet, a Willy Loman. And while the
actor playing Hamlet will suffer the indignation of having
his pretend life lived out in a mere two or three hours on
stage, he knows that the character with which he is associated
will be reborn every time the curtain is lifted, a compensation
that in part accounts for his equipoise and hard-earned self-esteem.
That we regard it as normal for a stage character to be resurrected
time and again through the centuries should give us pause
when we criticize, mock or reject religions founded on the
notion of rebirth, of someone coming back from the dead.
Now that film
is in the permanent preserve of both celluloid and digital,
the actor not only dreams of great fame and fortune, but to
be central to a film from which audiences will never tire,
and through which he will live on, agelessly, long after his
coffin has been lowered. Inventors and discoverers will rest
in peace knowing that their inventions and vaccines will survive
future conflagrations and pandemics.
Despite rejection
and enfeeblement, old age is not without its consolations.
In an age where we are being constantly bombarded with information
and choice, being in the present is becoming more and more
problematic. Yoga retreats, Hindu/Zen ashrams and meditation
courses are proliferating, with the aim of training the chronically
distracted mind to be in the present, the fugitive now, where
most old people naturally dwell like the children they once
were a long long time ago.
Shut out from
any future, most suffering from memory issues, the old don’t
require instruction on how to be wholly in the present. Most
of them are already there, making do with what is there before
them: a favourite music, a turn on the balcony towards a warming
sun. Observing them in their final home, the undivided attention
they lavish on whatever they are doing in the full blush of
the present indicative that speaks the language of the eternal,
I’m not sure if in their varying degrees of confusion
and forgetfulness they have been saddled with the ultimate
indignity or touched by the hand of a merciful God.
Just as there
is always a wave to replace the one that has just crashed,
there will always be old people. If we’re lucky enough,
we’ll one day be counted among them. How will we react
to the younger generations that don't want to know about us?
What can we do to help make the fear and trembling the old
arouse a part of their vital concerns? How can we convince
them that the meaning of their lives will be enhanced in direct
proportion to the time they spend with us, that the message
of death the old carry tolls for them, and what the toll tells
is what prepares a person to rise to the occasion of humility
before the new dawn's magnificent early light, to cherish
the change in key from a major to minor, and to give thanks
or recite a prayer upon seeing an old friend.
After every visit
with my mother, now in a senior's home, I become more and
more convinced that, taking liberties with T. S. Eliot, “old
people ought to be sailors.”
