Aging Gracefully

In his review of Louis Begley’s new novel, (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/books/review/schmidt-steps-back-by-louis-begley.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=ron%20carlson&st=cse), the third in which Albert Schmidt, now 78, is the central character, Ron Carlson quotes a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notebooks, “No such thing as graceful old age.”  Fitzgerald’s perspective was skewed, since he died at 44.  Perhaps he would have changed his mind had he been privileged to become old.

One hears often enough that an individual is (or is not) aging gracefully, but until I read Carlson’s review, I’d not thought much about what it means.  Albert Schmidt, the protagonist of Begley’s novel, has, according to the reviewer, aged gracefully.  A rich, retired lawyer who lives in the Hamptons and oversees the philanthropic foundation of an even richer friend, he’s fallen in love with the widow of a former colleague.  Schmidt is “capable of a sobering empathy,” writes the reviewer, “has a withering understanding of the recent Bush regime, knows how to prepare a martini and sends his retired cleaning ladies an annual check.”  None of these qualifications is essential for graceful aging, of course, not even being rich, although surely that helps.  The point, it seems to me, is that Schmidt fully participates in life.  What matters to him, writes the reviewer, “is love, self, gossip, philosophy, insult, rivalry, mortality and yes, kindness and grace.”

But there’s more to aging gracefully than continuing to engage in the world outside oneself.  Those who age gracefully do not rail against the limitations that age imposes.  They do not try to appear younger than they are, nor do they pretend that their strength is undiminished.  Gracefully aging women do not dress in the fashion of the young nor do they plaster their faces with makeup in an effort to conceal the ravages of age.  Gracefully aging men do not employ combovers nor do they marry women who are their daughters’ contemporaries.  Those who age gracefully, in other words, accept themselves for what they are.  This is a formula not only for graceful aging but for graceful living as well.

The Loneliness of Extreme Old Age

In the last Times Sunday Review, Louis Begley, a 78-year-old retired lawyer best known for his novels, published an essay entitled “Age and Its Awful Discontents.”   He had nothing good to say about old age, terming its gifts “bitter.”  He attributes his dread of the “ravages and suffering inflicted on the body by age and illness” to his having no role models of successful aging in his family when he was growing up.  Those older relatives who could have provided models for him perished in Poland during the Second World War. 

The chief witness for the ills of aging seems to have been his mother, who died in her 94^th year, a widow for the last 40 of them.  In her final years, her pain, poor hearing, physical disabilities, unwillingness to use a wheelchair, and inability to manage a walker kept her at home, unable to visit museums, attend concerts, or even sit in the park.  Those of her friends who had escaped from Poland and lived in New York had “one by one became homebound or bedridden, lost their minds or died.”  During her last decade, she was, writes Begley, “very lonely.”  It has taken him until now “to feel in full measure the bitterness and anguish of my mother’s solitude - and that of other old people who end their lives without a companion.”

When I read this grim conclusion, I remembered an incident last week in which my wife and I were holding hands as we walked down the street.  A neighbor, who saw us, said it was nice to see us holding hands.  “We’re holding each other up,” said my wife, which raised a laugh from our neighbor and from me.  But as my wife and I continued down the street, the thought struck us both that in truth we were holding each up, not physically of course, not yet anyway, but emotionally.  I count her presence in my life as my chief blessing.  Still, I doubt I would be as lonely as Mr. Begley’s mother in the unlikely event I became a widower.  Our daughter and her family live in the other wing of our building, and my wife and I are making new friends among our neighbors and the younger members of our congregation.  Mr. Begley’s article increases our resolve to strengthen these friendships, because friends of our own age will inevitably drop away, one by one, if we reach extreme old age. 

Louis Begley’s essay reminded me of another essay, Montaigne’s “On the Length of Life,” in which he writes that “dying of old age is a rare death, unique and out of the normal order and therefore less natural than the others.  It is the last, the uttermost way of dying; the farther it is from us, the less we can hope to reach it.”  This was true towards the end of the sixteenth century, when these essays were written, and it remained true until very recently.  But according to the 2000 census, there were more than 50,000 centenarians in the United States, where centenarians comprise the fastest growing age segment of the population, and in 2008 seven-tenths of one per cent of the American population were in their nineties.  The loneliness experienced by Louis Begley’s mother will become an increasing problem. Broadening one’s friendships to include the young may mitigate the loneliness. 

To paraphrase Johnson, while old age has many pains, death has few pleasures.  It behooves us all to broaden our circles, which may reduce the pains of extreme old age, should we attain it.


2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved