Pulling out one's Teeth

“Old age is a state of mind,” says my immensely likeable, fresh-faced young dentist.    He’s speaking during a moment when one or another of his instruments is not occupying my mouth. He went on to tell me about a patient, in her sixties, who came to him with a request to pull out all her teeth and to replace them with dentures.  “I’ve raised my children and now I’m a grandmother,” she told him, “so now it’s time for dentures.”  In the course of three sessions with her, he tried to discourage her from taking out her teeth, which were perfectly serviceable.  I asked him if her motivation was cosmetic.  Were her natural teeth ugly?  He said not.  He thinks that she regards the removal of her teeth and their replacement with dentures as a rite of passage, in this case the passage into old age.  “She seemed to think,” he told me, “that her life’s work was over.” 

When my father was in his sixties, his dentist advised him to pull out all his teeth.  Sensibly, my father sought a second opinion.  He consulted Professor Minor of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.  Professor Minor told my father that the first dentist had been correct as far as textbook dentistry was concerned.  “But Mr. Anchises,” Professor Minor said, “we can always pull out your teeth.  In the meantime, let’s see what we can do to save them.”  My father lived another fifteen years and kept most if not all of his teeth.  He didn’t think his life’s work was over.  Indeed, he kept working long after he was able to drive himself to work (my cousin, who worked in the same office and by then was president of the company, kindly drove him) or to walk down the office hallway without holding onto the wall.  “I want to die with my boots on,” he often said, and he almost did, retiring less than a year before he died.

I don’t know if my father considered himself an old man or if he did, when he began to think so, but his behavior was consistent with my dentist’s idea that old age is a state of mind.  My father wasn’t going to let his teeth be pulled without a struggle nor was he going to allow physical disability keep him from his work. 

Still, when my dentist made his assertion about old age’s being a state of mind, I thought that he was right only in part.  I remembered the slowness with which I climb the subway stairs and how I marvel, when I watch young people rush past me, ascending the stairs like mountain goats, that I too once ran up the same stairs just as fast as they do. The difference in physical abilities between youth and old age is not a state of mind. 

But one’s state of mind does influence one’s response to such disabilities.  As for me, I want to keep vertical as long as I can and to cram as much experience as possible in the time that’s left.  I don’t consider my life’s work over, nor will I as long as I remain compos mentis. 

My dentist was unable to convince his patient to keep her teeth.  She will probably seek a more amenable dentist.  Let’s hope that dentist can not only persuade her that she doesn’t need dentures but that one’s life is not over when one becomes a grandparent.  In some ways, it’s a new beginning.