We’re all “aging.” From our neighbor turning 10 to friends turning 80, if you manage to stay alive, aging happens. For a time, that process means gaining abilities. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the gains stabilize. Eventually, they become losses.
When 55-year-old Susan moved back to the Valley, and Ron made his Valley debut at 68, losses were underway, but not yet noticeable enough to cause much concern. Ron was riding centuries on his bike, and Susan was skinning mountains to earn untracked powder. But as the years passed, things changed. Susan recently celebrated 70 cycles around the sun by e-biking 200 miles on rails-to-trails routes, and Ron celebrated becoming 85 by having an asthma attack in Thailand and learning the value of prednisone, a reminder that bodies have their own ideas. Then they both went home to rest (and rest, and . . .)
For years now, injuries, surgeries, drugs and carefully orchestrated recoveries have often kept them from much of that good Roaring Fork stuff we live here for. Still, they’re lucky. They’re still aging. But even without those medical interruptions, their “performance curves” would have dropped; and every ability we lose, every activity we cut back or give up, leaves holes in our lives. Those holes need filling.
Two of Susan’s elderly friends came for a visit. (We can’t really say “old” anymore — too much confusion in that word.) A few days before they arrived, Susan looked at her house and quickly wrote to them, “Can you manage my stairs? All my bedrooms are upstairs. Should I rent a room for you nearby?” They replied they could manage if there were good handrails. (The guy used to run marathons.) Susan’s antique dining table chairs are a little fragile. Surprisingly, none of them were damaged, despite her 6’5”, well-built friend having to push his chair against a wall and then push the wall to get up. But though the chairs survived unscathed, the toilet tank developed a leak when he tried the same trick to stand from the commode. His wife was Susan’s running partner. Now, they are looking at being walk-around-the-block partners. “The time has arrived,” she told Susan, “to find mutually interesting sedentary activities.”
These are mostly small losses. We can live with them. So far. But they add up, creating holes in our lives. At cancer centers they often say, “It is what it is. Accept it and move on.” But as our losses add up, how do we fill the empty spaces they leave?
Susan, giving a visitor directions to one of her favorite runs during a chairlift ride, wondered: When was the last time SHE skied there? But she had that conversation on a chairlift. She was still skiing. No hole yet. Ron gave up scuba diving once he was no longer sure he could track all the numbers that kept him breathing. That left a hole. But he hasn’t given up biking. He bought an e-bike to help him climb hills. Sometimes, technology can plug holes that aging creates. When Susan’s broken ankle healed, she danced again, until a meniscus tear sent her back to surgery. And there she was, taking another unwanted break from dancing. Now, the meniscus is fixed, and she’s back once more, but at a different level.
Everybody has to find their own way to fill the holes that aging leaves. Ron’s mother, who once loved long walks, stopped leaving her home at age 88 after her husband died. When Ron asked her if she wanted to continue living, she unhesitatingly said, “Yes.” When he asked her what she was living for, she answered, “to have lunch, watch some television.” Not a satisfying answer for Ron, but it was her life and her hole to fill.
We, the members of Age-Friendly Carbondale, fill some of our holes with causes and projects, creating existential meaning by making some of our dreams come true for the sake of someone else’s future. Having been flower children, protesting hippies and such, we are not growing old in the world we expected to grow old in. (There’s that “O” word again.)
We expected more economic and social equality, equal justice under fairly applied law, maybe even some swords becoming plowshares. We made but a little progress, and now it seems we are losing much of it. So, we are filling some of our holes by going back to our political roots, intent on leaving at least our little corner of the world better than we found it. At age 30, we thought we could win the fight, but now, we think it’s engagement that matters; the process of working for what we care about can make life more worth living, regardless of the successes, setbacks and failures.
Ron once had a mentor who said that she wanted the inscription on her headstone to read “All Used Up.” She wanted people to know she had used up everything life gave her. Filling the holes aging creates is one way of doing that.
Mature Content is a monthly feature from Age-Friendly Carbondale.