Here Comes Treble: Not For Sissies
...“Old age,” my mother often said, “is not for sissies.” As she always smiled when she said this, none of us took her seriously...
Columnist Isabel Bradley philosophically faces up to the consequences of living to an advandced age.
“Old age,” my mother often said, “is not for sissies.” As she always smiled when she said this, none of us took her seriously. Mom seemed to sail through old age. All the signs of difficulty and discomfort, not to mention pain, were there, if we’d only been ready to see them. Of course, Mom didn’t want sympathy, so she never seemed to need it.
As her fingers grew crooked and clumsy, she said, “One day you just don’t have the strength in your hands to hold things, they just fall and break…” So we picked up the pieces of the teapot lid and stuck them together. And one day, the same thing happened to me, and I gave a silent nod to what Mom had said so many years ago. She never said anything about the pain that goes with the weakness and the stiffening processes. That is something one has to experience oneself.
As Mom sat, huffing and puffing in her chair after the effort of walking, with the aid of her walking frame, from the dining-room to her one-room living space in Mid-Care at the retirement village, she said, “You know, I don’t have the energy I used to… imagine, I used to bake shortbread and cook marmalade and go the shops and run the choir. Now I’m exhausted after walking 50 metres!”
Again, she didn’t mention the pain of aching joints, of hips compensating for feet that were twisted and swollen and couldn’t hold her weight, and of the inevitable pain in her side and back, which was hunching more with every day.
No, Mum never warned us of the discomforts, difficulties and pain of getting old, though the signs were there every step of the way.
Another friend of ours, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, refers to her condition as ‘the shakes’. She exclaimed once that no-one ever warned her of the things one suffers as one grows old. “Apart from the shakes, which mean that I can’t drive,” she says, “and the swollen ankles and the high blood pressure and the pills I’ve got to take, I’ve got nothing wrong with me. But my poor husband, with carpal-tunnel syndrome in his hands and cancer eating him from the inside out, he’s suffering.”
Her husband is an engineer and another person who is always smiling. “He can’t work much any more, can’t do any lifting, so he sits inside and listens while I read to him and he makes small things out of tin cans, and paints everything, he’s teaching himself to do Bauernmalerei decorations.”
“It’s hard when you get old,” she continued in a musing tone. She wasn’t complaining, was quite cheerful, just letting me know the facts. “I used to belong to all sorts of groups – sewing, knitting, baking, scrap-booking, there was always something going on and I had lots of lovely friends. But then our daughter said it was time to move to this cottage on their property, so that when we’re older they can look after us. It only makes sense, of course, and we’re very lucky, the cottage is lovely and my daughter and son-in-law are very good to us. But I don’t see my friends any more, and with the shakes I can’t write to them or do most of the things I enjoyed. But – we’re in the best place now, I know that…” she trailed off, looking a little wistful.
Of course, as I get older myself, I notice the silly little things that no-one ever mentioned, yet were, of course, obvious if one looked and thought about them. My eyebrows are going grey. Of course they are, why wouldn’t they, when all my other hair started greying years ago? Of course, the hair on my head is tinted regularly the minute I notice a grey strand creeping in, before the necessity becomes obvious to anyone else. My very understanding hair-dresser now tints my eyebrows every time they start fading away.
My hands seem to be aging far faster than the rest of me. They’re either ugly with swollen, hot and painful joints, which discomfort extends to ankles, feet, knees, hips and elbows. Then, when the inflammation dies down, I look at those previously swollen areas, and they’re old and wrinkled and slightly mis-shapen. I’m grateful, of course, that my hands still let me play the flute!
My arms don’t tan smoothly any longer, unlike the far-off days when I turned a gorgeous golden-brown in the sun. Now I just go splodgy.
Would any of us, though, swap our aging bodies for younger versions that did things without effort, which had energy and beauty and only occasional aches and pains? Not if it came with the provision that I had to go through all my earlier experiences again. Once is about all I can cope with! I certainly wouldn’t. In spite of greying eyebrows, nails that are ridged, aches and pains and lack of energy, I like myself far more than I ever did.
The time it took to wear the wrinkles and the pain into my life has also led me to more happiness than I ever thought possible. I have a husband who loves and cherishes me, and whom I adore, we’ve built a beautiful life together of companionship, understanding each other and helping and supporting each other in everything we do. We have wonderful, independent adult children who are making their way in the world with great success and are also edging towards their own maturity and happiness and three beautiful grandchildren. One day, they too, will discover exactly why old age isn’t for sissies. Until then, let them live in ignorant bliss.
I have an idea that we were all warned, over and over again, of the negatives of old age. The problem is that we just didn’t take it personally.
I can only hope that the discomforts will be far outweighed by the joys of family and music and that I can end my days smiling peacefully, as my mother did.
Until next time…. ‘here comes Treble!’
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by Isabel Bradley
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