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Nov. 22, 2013
Losses increase as we get older
Retaining our connections and sense of self are difficult in a society that shuns death.
SEEMAH C. BERSON
As we age, it is difficult to remember names and words, even more difficult sometimes to string a sentence together confidently or to focus on what it is you are, in any given moment, trying to do. I call it memory loss syndrome (not found in medical tomes).
Most of us accept the process of aging in one way or another. Many of can carry on quite well into our 60s, 70s and even our 80s. In this manner, old age creeps up on us but, eventually, we must acknowledge its presence and the fact that it is here to stay. Yes, there is Botox, plastic surgery, hip/knee/shoulder/teeth/breast (and other) replacements and a range of pharmaceuticals that can allow us a few more years of younger-looking and pain-free freedom with sanity intact. However, for the less fortunate, age not only rushes in, but it comes with great loss.
Loss appears in a variety of garments and forms, for some appearing in a shocking manner; for others, creeping into our lives insidiously and we wake up “disabled,” our hand hurts when lifting a pot, the ankle is not so steady today, a blood-blister appears on our inner thigh. More cosmetically, you can now fold the hanging skin of your upper arm at least once! And, of course, the liver spots. These losses are relatively easy to put up with, but when we cannot remember – first the names, then the nouns, then the dates when special things happened to you, and much more – then we start to feel the losses piling up.
Nature is not fastidious nor does it prepare us to face the inevitable losses that come with aging. How can it be that last week I could remember her name and now I am struggling?
The order of things in life prepares us for the passing of parents and elders in their time. However, this does not mean we are able to accept the loss of a parent or relative. Losing a parent to old age is one kind of loss, and losing a parent when you’re a young child is a different kind, one that leaves a void, hard to fill. I lost my mother in my early teens. Added to this was the death of my best friend.
When a friend dies, especially suddenly, it is such a loss. When someone in your community is diagnosed with a disabling disease, it is a loss, when a friend is forced to move into a care facility, it is a loss – not only for the friend but for ourselves. These are all very personal losses. We lose their company.
Yes, you can still visit or go out, but the potential for spontaneity is lost.
We can learn to live with (or without, as the case may be) most of the physical losses that come along. Each time we lose something – hair, teeth, use of muscles, pain-free joints, the ability to run, walk, even open a jar – we are accepting loss. Consciously or subconsciously, we are accepting loss and aging in this process. The two are intertwined.
When we are told we must give up driving due to age (eyesight, disease, cognition) it is a loss, because we stop socializing, we stop attending events, we suffer under the burden of obligation to those who still drive and kindly do the honors of shlepping us. Our contact with others dwindles even as our coterie of acquaintances shrinks. There is the great danger that soon we will stop keeping in touch, as distance becomes further, both because of difficulty in travel and the emotional distance that can develop when you don’t see your friends or family as often. Phoning becomes a chore – who wants to hear the litany of your health problems? Or about another’s passing?
There is another kind of loss: that of shared memories. The memories you share with someone special, if either you or that someone special is slowly forgetting or has forgotten the lived past you have shared. This is a very big loss, because you cannot find it in a book, or at the doctor’s office, in a photo collection or a video – nowhere. In this situation, with whom can you reminisce about your youth, falling in love, sharing a hamburger when you were both hungry and broke, your firstborn, and so many other such memories? No one.
As we shrink mentally, we also do so physically. This is a loss you can do nothing about, even if you’re a woman who can afford the fanciest heels. You cannot wear high heels to make you taller because now you cannot walk at all in heels. You are lucky to be perambulatory, so forget the heels. With heels go a few more shoes that will never again grace your once-dainty feet. Clothes now stop cheering you up as often either.
And so, we give away the accoutrements that helped turn us, once upon a time, into whatever we needed to be: out they go by the hangers-full into the give-away boxes and bags. Saying goodbye to these possessions is another loss. Not an earthshaking one but yet another in the parade of losses.
This is not a definitive list of the losses that occur as we age, and this thought, for some reason, makes me want to laugh out loud! But you’re getting the picture.
We are told that women are generally better at coping; and some women are better at it than others. Yes, I have met a few capable ones.
Is loss a state of mind then? Can we jog along unaffected by loss? Trot off to a concert, a dance, visit the hairdresser? I don’t think so. With each loss, a little more of ability to withstand the onslaught of aging takes another whack.
If your body is breaking down, letting you down, and your mind, you notice, is playing tricks on you more often, what can you do?
If you can help defer the inevitable by doing crosswords, playing Scrabble, going for walks, being involved in community, etc., go for it. However, certain other disabilities cannot be overcome or compensated for by any activity. You must accept them with a certain degree of aplomb, which sounds rather fatuous; but what other choice do you have?
You can simplify your life when it starts to go awry or else you will find yourself juggling a lot of balls, too many of which are curved. You will be overwhelmed and fraught, unable to deal with everything. If you throw up your hands, cry, scream, tear at your hair, walk away (if you can, that is!), will it help?
As we age, coping with all the “whatevers” leads to a loss of self and, ultimately, this loss of self makes us afraid.
In our society, there is a certain disregard of elders and our tremendous achievements and life experience. Our vast array of knowledge, our accumulated wisdom, is too often overlooked or discounted. In many people’s eyes, we have become a liability to governments, to travel insurance providers, and younger taxpayers, who are convinced we will eat up their savings. We are, at times, discriminated against. We wait to die.
Why, in this day and age, in a country as advanced and advantaged as Canada, are there elders who are afraid and would like to just curl up and die?
Notwithstanding that on almost every TV channel we can view any number of the dead and dying, murdered and mutilated, in our society, we are seldom in the presence of actual death, of those who are dying. Many of us end up dying in a hospital or in a care facility, in sterile, unfamiliar surroundings, and seldom in our own bed. If we are fortunate, we will have a familiar face or two beside us.
We are afraid of being with the dying because we don’t know what to do; when all that is needed is just being there. It has no meaning after the fact.
Seemah C. Berson, born in Calcutta, India, in 1931, has lived in Vancouver since 1954. Married to Harold, with four sons and various grandchildren, baruch Hashem, she and Harold are longtime members of the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. Author of I Have a Story to Tell You (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2010), comprising the personal recollections of Jewish immigrants to Canada between 1900-1930, subsequently working in the Canadian garment industries, she is a freelance writer and occasional dabbler in art, children’s poems and stories.
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