Open Writing

Something happened recently which focussed my attention on a situation that most of us will face should we live long enough to reach it, as it is largely a corollary of old age. The event, simple enough in its form, and not altogether unexpected, is a tragedy, although not everything to do with advancing years is to be feared.

A definite mellowing attends advancing age that is at once welcome and pleasant. It is particularly so for those whose earlier years have been marked with discord and difficult interpersonal relationships. This geniality is one of the fruits that ripens as maturity spreads through the ageing person and suits them to meet the demands and indignities that are coincident with increasing years and failing powers. It fits the geriatric to accept what would be unacceptable in a younger and more vigorous person who still must contend against unwelcome events and circumstances.

It is not that the aged person gives up the fight for dignity and position, but that they have come to accept new rules of engagement, and to understand that not all battles can be won, especially those that follow in the wake of anno domini. This realisation is an awakening, a grim rebirth without regeneration apart from the recognition that former delineations no longer apply and that henceforth life is lived under the sway of ‘a pharaoh that knows not Joseph.’ The elder must yield to this despot to continue living with any degree of pleasantness, and most of us make the transition with hardly a sigh, because the change is subtle, insidious, and takes us when we are weakest.

There are those who are unfortunate in that they do not settle for the offerings of age with the serenity that adds blessing to the end of our days, but who become embittered by what is lost rather than grateful for what they have had. For these, the almost inevitable tragedy of long years is doubled.

The most recognisable feature of autumnal life is marginalisation, which is an increasing distance between the geront and the mainstreams of life. The first distancing comes with retirement, when the familiar scenes of employment and associations with workmates are dropped as a circumstance of ageing, often after several decades of close relationships with place and persons.

Family affection is not diminished although in these times of hypermobility and a shrinking world many family members live long distances away from their parents, even whole continents away, which can heighten the isolation of those in their declining years, and the oft-repeated refrain, "They have their own lives to lead," is a shallow comfort that signals resignation to that which is difficult to endure but impossible to transform. It is part of the pattern of human life that is repeated down the generations except in unusual circumstances.

But there is another kind of marginalisation and isolation that no effort of will or commitment can overcome, and that is the isolation of failing memory. Those who, like myself, suffer from a diminishing memory will understand that forgetfulness is not always a boon and a blessing when it reaches the degree that those once familiar to us are no longer remembered. That loss of recollection is the archway to a world in which all men are strangers, and each moment a puzzle of giant proportions as the mind struggles to comprehend the incomprehensible otherness of life.

I can remember little of my childhood, sometimes even less of more recent days, and the promise of the awakening and brightening of distant memory said to be the blessing of old age has failed to materialise, yet some good fortune lies in the fact that I can still sketchily recall most of my family and friends at home and abroad, even when their names are lost to me, and when their faces are worryingly remote in what remains of the mechanism of mental imagery, that Wordsworth called ‘the bliss of solitude.’ Yet, what I can recall keeps me connected to life and some of its major aims whilst relieving my mind from the burden of too many facts and details.

That this is a blessing came sharply to me when Gay telephoned an old and dear friend called Anna Vee. Anna had been a close neighbour of Gay’s when they both lived in Las Vegas where Gay taught school. Hardly a day passed without Gay visiting Anna’s apartment to talk to her, and to run errands when needed. As Anna grew old, she developed paraphrenia with a paranoid component that was the frequent cause of the police visiting her to investigate charges that people were entering her home and stealing her treasures. Anna had many beautiful and expensive things in her home, but there was never any evidence of intruders or loss, although Anna could catalogue them accurately, adding to them whenever another intrusion and loss occurred to her.

It was a sad day for Anna when Gay moved back to Arizona, and although Gay kept in touch with her by telephone, it was not the same as a good neighbour calling in for a chat and to offer support for a lady of increasing age whose family had largely predeceased her. When we toured the Western and North-western states, we called to see Anna. She received us graciously, but she spent most of the time recounting her losses, and her insecurity, especially as the police failed to keep her and her valuables safe from illegal appropriation.

We kept in touch with her by telephone, and wrote to her, receiving letters in return, maintaining a cherished friendship for several years. Then, a letter was returned unopened, marked, "Not known at this address." It took almost a year of investigation to discover that Anna had moved to California to be near one of her younger sisters, although her health had deteriorated to where she needed sheltered accommodation. The telephone calls and letters resumed, along with exchanges of Christmas cards. Then, they stopped again. Anna had vanished.

Although her legal name is Anna Vee, that is not the name she was born with. She moved to America with her parents from Czechoslovakia in the nineteen-twenties when she was a child. The immigration officials at Ellis Island could not cope with Vyhonsky and shortened it to its first letter, "V," and thereafter their documents bore the name "Vee" as their American family name.

Gay decided that she should once again try to locate her friend. She called a relative of Anna’s hoping that she would know where she was and provide contact details. Anna had been moved to a nursing facility due to her deteriorating health, but a telephone number was supplied that called directly into Anna’s room. However, Gay’s joy was short-lived, for even as her friend answered, when Gay introduced herself, Anna did not recognise her and could not remember her. Recounting some of the pleasant friendship times they had spent together did not unlock the steel trap that had closed over Anna’s memory. How awful even to contemplate, that friends can be so totally lost to us by the ravages of unkind time.

Yet even from her darkness, Anna suggested to Gay that if she would send a photograph it might help her remember. It seems that this is not the first time this has happened. A photograph of Gay as she was when she lived a few doors away from Anna Vee is now in the post. Will it make the tumblers turn and open a window in her memory and revive a friendship and companionship that was mutually enriching and beautiful? Our prayer is that it will.

We are determined to face whatever life brings to us in our sunset years with smiles and good humour, and to keep bitterness and regret at a good distance. We want to be mellow, gracious, dignified, useful, dispensers of simple wisdom, and retain our affection for all those we love.

To assist us in keeping our precious memories functioning, we have hundreds of photographs that show on our computer screen, changing the picture each minute, randomly exposing images from our several and joint pasts in a glorious procession of cherished people, places, and animals, each of which has illuminated and warmed our world. We have it constantly before our eyes in the hope that we can maintain as much as possible of our memories and forestall the possibility that we will never need to have photographs sent to us to try to recollect those we love.

Life may yet take from us many useful things, but no loss can be as consequential or as grievous as the destruction of the understanding of who and what we are, and of the people who helped to make us so. Those who live in an ever shrinking world in which past and future are unknowable are imprisoned in an eternal present. Yet, it is possible that even as they are deprived of hope, in like manner their fears and misgivings are also stolen by the thief who stalks the footsteps of time, removing everything that identifies us to ourselves; our self-knowledge, our memories, our essential being.

Yet even in the constricting darkness, the likelihood remains that a kind and gentle word from the lips of a stranger who used to be a friend, can illuminate the moment and cheer the bleak heart of those whom time has abandoned to await the welcoming arms of the charnel house. It is a worthwhile commission even though we may never know whether we have warmed a heart or only added to its confusion. We will do our best for Anna Vee. She deserves no less.

Other stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html