Old age awaits — if you’re lucky

Fellow Jews, do you know what old age is? It’s often the most powerful destination in your life. Pretty impressive!

It’s a place each of us fearfully yearns for. After all, consider the alternative!

And though that alternative will get all of us in the end, why not grow old along with me, even though the best is certainly not to be. (Thanks to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who thought otherwise.)

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Writing about my own old age makes me a hot commodity. I’m trendy. People not quite my age, who see the designation looming in their own futures, are writing about it in places where, to use a newish word, influencers are reading. It is, after all, a hoped-for status to almost everyone, so why not wax on about its problems and rewards? Read all about it in places like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Star-Ledger, and numerous other publications. There are regular articles shedding new light on an old ubiquitous problem, the increasing failings of old age.

As if that’s not enough, look for advertisements, often masked as information, on your laptop and TV. You’re being followed. You’re simply not anonymous anymore. There are vitamins and specialty food items just for you! And me!

In short, you just cannot escape. Truly, you can’t get out of here, or there, alive. God will answer your prayers, but often the answer will be no.

What is it about getting old that’s so fascinating to so many? I suppose it’s because the phenomenon is our shared desired goal. None of us want to rush into it. Believe me, for those who haven’t yet needed to come to grips with it, staying alive is what you want to do, but pain and suffering and the indignities of aging are definitely not.

And you need to know that it happens way too fast. One day you’re dancing around on slippery floors in your spike heels or gleaming patent leather loafers. Overnight, you’re schlepping along in the custom-made ugliest shoes in the world, orthotics, molded-to-your-feet monstrosities, which are unbelievably yours. Your feet, your shoes.

Or you’re trying to dress up a cocktail outfit with your sneakers. No. You won’t get arrested for that offense. But just look in the mirror before leaving for the wedding! You really should get arrested!

True. Whatever you do, most people will be kind to you. That’s because you’re old and they’re not. It’s called patronizing, and they really don’t understand that soon enough they’ll be old enough to be patronized too. But to verify the distinction between them and you, just offer them a ride in your car. If they demur, it’s because they cannot possibly imagine being a passenger with you behind the wheel. They’re plain scared!

The ultimate problem with life is that it goes by so quickly. Yesterday you were getting married, and today you’re ancient. You bought a house. Had kids. Sold the house and moved into a condo. Sorry about the stairs! You’re a grandparent and in a moment a great-grandparent. And this is all predicated on your being alive and staying alive. And you look at the entire scene, and it seems like it’s still Act One Scene 1, so how did you get to be an old hag? With conditions affecting your heart or lungs or digestive system or mobility or really an infinite number of body parts. Did you even know you had so many parts until they made you painfully aware of their existence?

Yesterday you were working yourself up the ladder in your career. Sometimes it was frustrating. Sometimes gratifying. And now, quite out of the blue, it doesn’t matter anymore. It is what it is and hopefully you’ve got enough money for the time remaining. No one at all cares whether you have a Ph.D., M.D., B.A., or high school diploma. Your experience and your influence are just worth nothing. You haven’t got anything to offer. Don’t volunteer advice. Not wanted or needed. Sorry. If you’re old, they’ll be kind, but they won’t ask your opinion. After all, you haven’t learned anything in these past 80 plus years or so. Or 70 either. I think you still can be respected for your thoughts until you’re around upper 60s. After that, forget about it. No one cares what you’ve got to say.

Maybe you think I’m a paranoid. But I truly don’t feel useless or disrespected, even if you think I am. It‘s merely your opinion versus mine. I’m still thinking straight, able to read and understand and remember. Most of the time anyway!

Yeah yeah! Sometimes I’m repetitive. That’s when you start to worry that I’m losing it or I’ve already finished losing it and can now say I lost it. But give me some slack. Sometimes you’re repetitive too! And actually sometimes I’m enlightened or clever or original. Just like you.

And, of course, needless to say, many don’t reach old age at all. People leave early for infinite reasons. There are shocking tragedies, unexpected passings, terrible things that happen. You don’t have to be old to experience suffering or sudden death from war, accidents, grievous illnesses, an infinite array of horrors that make life tenuous and often terrifying. At least old age is sometimes benign. Sometimes.

Old age cannot be summed up in a few paragraphs. It arrives unheralded, out of the blue, when you fall or forget or finally yield to its powers and get the walker or cane, the hearing aids, the stair-climber or the many other accoutrements that remind your friends that it has hit you. Hard.

The hardest, of course, is when those friends succumb. Sheila, the latest of my lost friends, my dear best buddy since the sixth grade, what happened? How did you die? You were so intact, so beautiful, so seemingly healthy. Your death diminishes me. We were teens together. And now look what happened. That’s death, the constant reminder that we’re all limited to one life even though we have so much more to observe and experience.

The French say it best: c’est la vie!

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of nine. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com