Month: August 2026

Projections of Old Age

Jenny Joseph was only in her twenties when she wrote her ubiquitous poem “Warning” (“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple”).  It projects a feisty version of old age; however, the poems she wrote in her own old age were much more credible.  This is from “A Patient Old Cripple” written when she was in her eighties:

I curse the world that blunders into me, and hurts

But know

Its bad fit is the best we can do.

When Jenny Joseph was very old, according to the BBC she found herself somewhat “annoyed” by the success of her early poem, which overshadowed her whole career.  So, the old ladies in purple dresses and red hats are really the projection of a young adult on how she would like her own old age to be.  What do we think about that?

This got me thinking about the difference between how we thought we would be in old age (or maybe how we hoped to be) and the actuality of our later years. Do our expectations of what it would be like to be old influence what kind of old person we become?  Old age was something I thought about even in middle age.  I was aware that I had been somewhat unconscious (sometimes downright comatose) during my earlier phases – youth, young adulthood, middle age – but I set out to craft a more conscious old age.  To help me think about that, I looked to literature.  And, representations of the old in literature include both those of the young imagining older characters, and old people writing about old characters like themselves.

When we are very lucky, we find authors and other artists who create over a full lifetime.  I find it particularly interesting to examine how their work has changed over the years and have written about that here and here.  Some writers have worked over the decades of a long life, consider the authors Wendell Berry or Marilynne Robinson, the poets Gary Snyder or Mary Oliver, and songwriters Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen.

In cases like that of Jenny Joseph, we even have the youthful projections of a young writer as to what old age will be like.  For example, we have Jonathan Swift’s list of life rules, “When I Come to Be Old” (hence the title of this blog), which were written when he was 32 and working as secretary to a much older man.  This old man’s habits are presumably inscribed as “thou shalt nots” on the list, and the notable and scary thing is that contemporary descriptions of Swift’s old age match the negative qualities Swift swears to avoid.  Swift did, however, recognize the futility of such rules in the last rule: “Not to set up for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none.”  And, of course, Swift was a notoriously difficult old man – how much of his character as an old man was the result of his expectations?  Or out of his control?

Lately we’ve been finally watching Monk, so I’ve had Randy Newman (who does the theme song “It’s a Jungle Out There”) on my mind.  Newman, age 82, is still alive and has had an even longer and diverse career than I was aware of, having written the scores for several of the Pixar movies (which I haven’t seen).  I remember him most fondly for songs like “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” (1968), and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”  He wrote the wonderful “God’s Song” for the hilarious movie Cold Turkey in 1971.  And, of course, he spawned controversy.  Remember “Short People” or the mock xenophobic song “I’m Dreaming of a White President” that he wrote for Barak Obama?  It contains the prescient lyrics:

I’m dreaming of a white President
Just like the ones we’ve always had
A real live white man who knows the score
How to handle money
Or start a war
Wouldn’t even have to tell me
What we were fighting for
He’d be the right man…

Randy Newman wrote an early song (1972), when he was only 29, called “Old Man,” about a dying father – and then another in 2017, about an old man losing his wife: “Lost Without You.”  Newman’s lyrics are always worth paying attention to, and I will decline to post the full lyrics here.  (You can find them by clicking on the song titles above.)  The early song was the words of the young man trying to communicate with his dying old man.  “Can you hear me?” the younger singer repeats over and over again.  He is ruthless.  He assumes the old man does not want to die; he assumes that he could open his eyes if he wanted to.  He reminds the old man that there “Won’t be no God to comfort you / You taught me not to believe that lie” and that “You don’t need anybody, nobody needs you.”  Newman’s tongue might be in his cheek, as it often is, but it is a cruel song.  As an old person, I would have opened my eyes just to tell this impertinent young person to leave my side.  “Don’t cry, everybody dies.”  Yes, everybody dies but almost everyone also cries.

The second song (written when Newman was about 71) is narrated by an old man (perhaps the young man from the earlier song grown old?) who is sitting by his wife’s deathbed.  The children are apparently complaining about their father and the mother rebukes them:

“Make sure he sleeps in his bed at night
Don’t let him sleep in that chair
If he holds out his hand to you, hold it tight
If that makes you uncomfortable
Or if it embarrasses you
I don’t care.”

And the old man speaks of his fears:

Even if I knew which way the wind was blowing
Even if I knew this road would lead me home
Even if I knew for once where I was going
I’m lost out here
Baby, I’m lost out here
I’m lost out here without you…

The older Newman is definitely on the side of the old folks – the old dying woman who wants to make sure someone will take care of the love of her life and the old man who is “lost out here without you.”  Newman has come a long way from “You don’t need anybody.”  These are real people who are really dying, and they are not afraid of dying – they are just afraid they will not be able to take care of each other anymore.  And we feel that now he knows what it feels like to be the elder.

I encourage you to read the books of the old – not just about old people but written by the old themselves.  I will try to create a list of recommendations and post it.  I would also recommend an article that appeared in 2015 in the NYTimes, “What Old Age is Really Like,” written by a young author trying to write about old people, and to whom I owe the credit for steering me to the poetry of Jenny Joseph’s old age.  For a fairy tale of how we project and stereotype old age, try my story “Tale of Two Grannies.”

The Old Age of Odysseus

Everywhere I go, people are talking about Nolan’s The Odyssey.  I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I have a deep love for the text and wonder how many people realize that it is a book about old age?

Of course, Homer’s epic is about many things.  Most obviously, it is about a man trying to get home.  When I first read it, it reminded me of a recurring dream where I am trying to get somewhere and obstacles keep stopping me.  When I was a student, I was trying to get to class to take an exam in the dream.  As a young mother, I was trying to get home to feed some starving animals in my dream.  I think this interrupted journey is a kind of universal dream theme.  But in reading The Odyssey in my old age, it is evident to me that this is also a story of old age, a dream of… what?

Everyone agrees that Odysseus is an old man for his time (between 55 and 60) when he finally arrives back in Ithaca after many storms and seductions to impede his progress.  He is obviously still a strong and vital man, especially when contrasted with his wonderful old dog and his ancient father – who must have been about 80.  He battles the suitors, and then the relatives of the slain, until the gods negotiate a peace, and finally… what?  Well, it depends on whom you ask.

The text itself gives one answer.  When Odysseus is in the underworld he converses with the prophet Tiresias, who tells him exactly what will and should happen:

But once you have killed those suitors in your halls – /by stealth or in open fight with slashing bronze – /go forth once more, you must … /carry your well-planed oar until you come /to a race of people who know nothing of the sea…. And here is your sign –/ unmistakable, dear, so clear you cannot miss it: /When another traveler falls in with you and calls /that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain,/ then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea, Poseidon…/ And at last your own death will steal upon you … /a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age /with all your people there in blessed peace around you. (Book XI, Fagles translation)

Toward the end of the Odyssey (Book 23), Odysseus repeats Tiresias’s entire prophesy to Penelope, including the manner of his death.  His wife takes it as a good omen:

“And so,” Penelope said, in her great wisdom,

“If the gods will really grant a happier old age,

There’s hope that we’ll escape our trials at last. (Fagles translation)

But the Western world was not content for Odysseus to fade into a peaceful old age.  In the Inferno, Dante places Odysseus in the eighth circle of hell for his “horse’s fraud that caused a breach” and other deceptions, and out of the burning flame where he is locked for eternity, he tells Dante and Virgil that he couldn’t stand a peaceful old age in Ithaca:

Neither my fondness for my son nor pity

For my old father nor the love I owed

Penelope, which would have gladdened her,

Was able to defeat me in the longing I had… (Mandelbaum translation)

So, Dante’s Odysseus gathered up his old comrades (the few that were left) and told them they were “not made to give your lives as brutes” but to follow a higher calling – and they followed him right out of the Mediterranean, into the southern hemisphere, and to their death in an eddy of the deep sea.  And what is the lesson there?

The lesson for Tennyson, when he penned his great poem “Ulysses” was that old men should be adventurers.  He starts his poem with Ulysses being bored with a peaceful life in Ithaca:

It little profits an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren craigs,

Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws to a savage race…

And so he riles up the old guys to take to the sea again:

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of our heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

There is a contradiction – the old men are to acknowledge what they “are,” but to override their age and weakness to strive and “not to yield.”  There is no acceptance here.  The deceptive Odysseus thinks he can somehow put one over on the natural order of things.  In our world of old men who seem determined “not to yield,” to fight one last war, and to build monuments of many kinds to themselves, Tennyson’s poem leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  “Do not go gentle into that good night” says Dylan Thomas.  If some of these old men went a little gentler, whole civilizations might be saved.

I have not yet seen Christopher Nolan’s movie – I am waiting for it to come to my small screen where the violence will be less overwhelming.  It is my understanding that Nolan’s version has it’s very own ending, perhaps a little softened and de-misogynized for the modern viewer.  I will continue to believe that Tiresias knew what would and should happen.  Odysseus would turn his back on the sea, make sacrifices to appease the gods that haunted with him, and rule in Ithaca.  And then, like all men he would die.  And, like lucky men and women, he would die at peace with his family and the world.

For an excellent supplement to any reading of The Odyssey, try Helen Luke’s essay in Old Age: Journey Into Simplicity.   For reading about how The Odyssey can affect your life, Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and An Epic and Norman Fischer’s Sailing Home: Using Homer’s Odyssey to Navigate Life are both highly recommended.  Keep a copy of The Odyssey close at hand when you are reading, of course!