Category: old age literature

The Borrowers, Old Age, and Memory

When I was a reading-obsessed child, there was a series of books called The Borrowers by Mary Norton – the first one was published in 1952 and won the Carnegie Medal.  The “Borrowers” are a family of tiny people who live by “borrowing” things from the people in the house – sometimes they return them, sometimes they don’t.  When things go missing in the house, they are blamed.  Norton uses maximum creativity in imagining what “borrowed” items might be used for by 6” people.  A thimble might become their stewpot, for example.

I do not know how we would characterize the Borrower books today; they are chapter books and Amazon describes them for children from 6-10; however, most children within that age range would have to have the books read to them (the writing includes words like philosophical and rheumatic).  The language level is surely at a par with what we term “young adult” novels now, but the subject matter is far tamer and probably far wiser.

The Borrower stories are told to the child Kate by the elderly Mrs. May, who was “some kind of relation” who lived with her younger family members in London.  There is this wonderful description of her in the first chapter:

Mrs. May was old, her joints were stiff, and she was – not strict exactly, but she had that inner certainty which does instead. Kate was never “wild” with Mrs. May, nor untidy, nor self-willed; and Mrs. May taught her many things besides crochet: how to wind wool into an egg-shaped ball; how to run-and-fell and plan a darn; how to tidy a drawer and to lay, like a blessing, above the contents, a sheet of rustling tissue against the dust.

How great is that passage?  Old Mrs. May had “inner certainty,” and she taught the little girl things, useful things.   Just being with Mrs. May made Kate into a better child – never “untidy” or “self-willed.”  If you read the Borrower books as a child, get one and read a couple of chapters.  Do this even if you didn’t read these books in your early years.  You will be charmed.  You will want to be like Mrs. May.

But back to “borrowing.”  We must have a family of Borrowers in our house, because I keep missing things – as well as names and words.  Is this the Borrowers too?  Things I have lost (“the art of losing isn’t hard to master”) do tend to show up sooner or later – usually just two days after they have been replaced.  They show up under a cushion on the couch, in the glove compartment, or set on a shelf in the linen closet.  The names of people and things that I have forgotten return too.  Where they have gone to is less obvious.  They are not gone forever, but seem to have sunken to the bottom of my consciousness, only to return when I no longer need them.  Oh, I will say to myself just as I am about to fall asleep, the name of that nice women in the grocery store was Jill.  Too late.  But where had Jill’s name hidden all afternoon?  Are there also borrowers of the mind?

Of course, there is inter-personal borrowing also.  I get aggravated at people in my life who borrow things and don’t return them.  And it is very uncomfortable to ask.  I loan out contemporary novels gladly, hoping they will never resurface in our house, which is always in need of more shelf space.  But important books are another thing.  I don’t begrudge the books themselves – most can be replaced for a pittance – but my marginal notes are precious (if only to me).  I must admit, though, that when I was going through books in anticipation of moving, I found more than one with the name of an old friend on the flyleaf.  Mea culpa.

My husband has his own answer to this dilemma.  He rarely, if ever, loans books, and never takes anything (even a plastic food container) to someone else’s house that he wants returned.  He has a skeptical view of human nature – or at least of human memory.

Of course, we also borrow memories from each other, which are also often appropriated and never returned.  We sometimes correct each other’s memories and often nudge each other into remembering past times that we had almost forgotten.  Sharing reminiscences can impress upon us how unreliable memory can be.  No family gathering is complete without an argument about exactly how something in the past happened.

In old age, we often say that we are living on “borrowed time.” But we have no intention of returning it.  And we may “borrow” from the past as well as the future.  I loved looking back at Mrs. May and her Borrower stories. Mrs. May knows what it means to lose something and what role the human imagination has in coping with it, making a story of it.  I wish I had Mrs. May’s “inner certainty.”

For an example of the borrowing and sharing of memories, you might look at my story “Boxing Day – A Vignette.”  Or, better yet, get a copy of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers out of the library.

Addendum to “Old Parents and Prodigal Children”

After I wrote “Old Parents and Prodigal Children,” I recalled two other great portrayals of prodigal sons and older fathers in recent literature.  The first is the wonderful Atticus, by Ron Hansen.  Atticus, in his sixties, has an older son who is a successful politician.  And then he has Scott – who was recklessly driving the car that took his own mother’s life, who cannot seem to stay stable in body, mind, or place.  Whom Atticus loves deeply.  And who keeps coming home. Hansen parallels the Bible parable with a twentieth century family drama, even making real the phrase from Luke: “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”  Scott is indeed thought to be dead, he himself conspires in this cruel deception, and yet Atticus, when he finds out that his son still lives, rejoices and welcomes him back, he “rushes out to greet him.”  Again.  And the reader is fairly sure that this will not be the last time.

The other story of a prodigal son spans all of Marilynne Robinson’s books about Gilead, Iowa (Gilead, Home, Lila and Jack).  Jack is the always disappointing son of the town’s Presbyterian minister, named for and godson of Gilead’s Congregationalist minister, and an enigma and a challenge to all who know him.  As he is dying, Jack’s father tells his son, “So many times, over the years, I’ve tried not to love you so much.  I never got anywhere with it, but I tried…”  And therein lies the problem.  Real love is not easily undone.  There is a nobility in the parents of prodigals, but I just wish it was not so hard on them.

In an interview with the New Yorker in 2020, Marilynne Robinson explains how she sees the parable of the Prodigal Son.  “I believe the parable is about grace, not forgiveness… the father loves the son and embraces him right away, not after any kind of exchange or apology.  I don’t think that is forgiveness – that is grace.” 

And what is grace?  I have seen it defined as the opposite of karma – rather than getting what you deserve, you get an undeserved gift.  But it would seem that, at some point in life, grace might fall on the shoulders of the parent, as well as the child.  But, again, grace is not something we can earn, even though it is something we can bestow.

 

Old Parents and Prodigal Children

Perhaps the story of the Prodigal Son means something different when we are old.   Will we take our children back when they fail or falter?  How many times?  With or without their children in tow?  In the story of the prodigal son, we are left to think that everything ends up ok – except perhaps, for the resentment of the older and more responsible brother.  The story (from Luke 15) ends with the father telling his “good” son why he has killed the fatted calf for his wayward sibling:

 And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.

But in real life, this is seldom the end of it.  Does the prodigal son stay on the straight and narrow or does he wake his father coming in drunk every night?  Has he sired children that are looking for support?  If he runs away a second time, will he be taken in again? In “Death of the Hired Man,” Robert Frost said that: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, /They have to take you in.”

How many times?  How many fatted calves? How much money?  How much heartache?  Surely, parenthood is a lifetime job, but we protected them when they were vulnerable – who is protecting the old couple who have frayed their nerves and spent their nest egg for the prodigal son or daughter who just keeps returning?  It is surely a question for our time.

Recently, I mentioned the story of the prodigal son to a parent who has had to exercise some tough love with an adult child, but seems to feel painfully guilty about it.  She pointed out to me that the father in the story represents God, not a typical parent.  Ah, I sighed, you are surely right.  But don’t we all see that gracious parent in Luke as the model of the endlessly forgiving parent?  Killing those fatted calves whenever there is a glimmer of light?

Because, here is the thing.  It is terribly difficult to renounce parenthood.  Harder than divorce, harder even than becoming estranged from your parents.  Your children can cut you out, but it is extremely difficult to cut them out – even when you have run out of energy and fatted calves.

There was a grand essay by Rebecca Solnit in Harpers entitled, “The Mother of All Questions.”  The question she poses is whether to have children.  (She has none.) And, of course, this is a weighty question, particularly in these days of economic distress and climate crisis.  But, when most of us made the decision to procreate (or neglected to make it and just let nature take its course), we were not possessed of our full maturity or even our right minds.

So here is the harder question: “Is it ever too late not to have children?”  To cut yourself off from your children?  Or, less extreme, is it ever too late to not make parenthood a primary identity?  Not to feel like we have to have the patience of the prodigal’s father, of Job, of God, in the face of the relentless demands of adult children?  It is not a question I have had to answer in any but the most minor ways, but I have watched the anguish that prodigal sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, can cause.

Here is another strange thing.  There are few novels, plays, or poems about good parents with bad children.  There is Balzac’s Pere Goriot, William March’s The Bad Seed, and a few other horror stories – however, novels and poems about bad parents abound. (Think of Philip Larkin’s wonderful “This Be the Verse.”)  Culture is on the side of the children.  While our offspring are children, that is the way it should be.  But what about when they are fifty and we are seventy?  There is no right answer to this question, but I find myself with great empathy for those who are asking it.

For a view of differing attitudes toward parents, you could try my story “Tale of Two Grannies” or look at “Snickerdoodles.”  Neither of these tales, however, depicts the extreme situations I am discussing.  It is probably no accident that most of the stories of “bad children” are tales of horror.  Again, I empathize and only hope it is never a situation I experience.

Looking Back on Childhood’s Eden

There is much debate in Buddhist circles (at least among the unenlightened) as to what enlightenment or nirvana would look like.  There is a similar debate in Christian circles about the nature of heaven.  Carl Jung had no doubt that it consists of going back to the childlike wonder we had about the world when we were very young, and Jung maintains that this is particularly important in our elder years.  “Proper development in the last part of your life is to rediscover the child you left behind when you commenced your apprenticeship.”

Who is the “child you left behind” before you embarked on your apprenticeship of fear and sophistication? How far back do your earliest memories go?  Psychologists used to say it was four or five years old, but now have pushed it back as early as two and a half.  Lots of us have what we think are very early memories, but turn out to just be recollections of experiences we were told about in our childhoods.  A more important question might be: what did your earliest memories consist of?  For most of us, the world of our childhood was full of bright colors and smells and fascinating experiences. While childhood is a world that fades, it is surely worth recalling.

Wordsworth famously struggled with this in his “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood:”

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

       The earth, and every common sight,

                          To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

            The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

                      Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Novelists too have tried to grasp what has been lost in the accumulations of time.  In the beginnings of both Great Expectations and David Copperfield, Dickens has his main characters struggle to recoup old memories:

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood. (from David Copperfield)

Then there is James Joyce at the beginning of Portrait of an Artist, talking about memories of “moo cows” and recalling his earliest sensations: “When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it is cold.”  Recently, I read Donal Ryan’s Queen of Dirt Island, which begins with the major character’s earliest memories, when “she was four…, or maybe just turned five.”  The memories then presented are technicolor scenes of grass and cherry blossoms.  Early memories are often magical in sight and sound.  The world was new to us.  In many ways, children are all Adams and Eves waking up to the delights of Eden.

And then there is a story in Sigrid Nunez’s new book, The Vulnerables, about a mother who started to act differently just before her totally unexpected death, in her premonitions acting in a childlike manner:

Whenever I [her daughter] came to visit, we usually took an afternoon walk, and that’s when I noticed something else…Mother kept stopping to point things out – Christmas lights on a neighbor’s house, clouds, squirrels scampering – as if she had never seen such things before.  It reminded me of going out with the kids when they were small and all the world, even the most ordinary things, made them gape. (31)

How wonderful to return to a world where everything can make us gape.  But how to do it?  We all, sometimes, want to return to our childhood Eden, but it is not easy.  James Baldwin puts it best in Giovanni’s Room:

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden.  I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword.  Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it.  Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both.

Jung says it is worth the effort to remember. He claims it is the way we were meant to live – not in childish ignorance, but in child-like wonder.  As Wordsworth goes on to say:

 Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

                      We will grieve not, rather find

                      Strength in what remains behind…

It is there, this child-like wonder, in all of us.  It sometimes surfaces in dementia, sometimes a brain injury loosens the gears.  I knew a middle-aged physics professor who had a bad bicycle accident and suddenly began singing the Polish lullabies of his very early youth, before Hitler’s Nazis drove his family out of Europe.  But it is not entirely a matter of memories, I think.  It is a matter of attitude, of what stance we take in this world.  Or refuse to take.

My story, “Like Heaven,” is about an old woman conflating her childhood with her current situation.  Perhaps, in her case, childhood turns out to be the better place to be.

I Am What I Am

 

When I was a small child in Rhode Island, Salty Brine and his collie named Jeff hosted a children’s program which, among other entertainments, ran the black and white cartoons of an indomitable, spinach-eating sailor.  Popeye had made his own peace with life and sang out his philosophy: “I am what I am and that’s all that I am, I’m Popeye the sailor man.”  Of course, in Popeye’s seagoing dialect, it came out “I yam what I yam,” which is how Robin Williams sang it when he played Popeye in 1980.  As a child, I loved Popeye and hated Bluto.  Life was simpler then.

But the phrase, “I am what I am,” has been rattling around in my head again lately.  It is, of course, primarily Biblical.  When Moses beholds the burning bush and talks to his Maker, he is concerned about how to convey the reality of his theodicy to his fellow Hebrews. “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”  God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”  Then, in case Moses is still confused, God adds: “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”  Poor Moses took this strange message down to the people.

We get the phrase again in the New Testament – this time from Paul in his letter to the Corinthians.  “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”  Paul is talking about the fact that Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus.  It seems a strange statement, for surely we all are what we are?  What does he mean?  One might wonder.  Ben Franklin seems to have his tongue firmly in his cheek when he asks: “I am what I am and that’s all that I am and if I’m supposed to be somebody else, why do I look like me?” 

But the speaker of this phrase that I have mostly been fixated on for the past week is that of Jonathan Swift.  As many of you know, I have spent much of my life pondering Swift; this blog is titled after his own resolutions about old age. But that list was compiled long before Swift entered his own raving and often very public senescence. Here is a story from the year before he died, recounted by his grandnephew, Deane Swift:

On Sunday the 17th of March [1744], as he [Jonathan Swift] sat in his chair, upon the housekeeper’s moving a knife from him as he was going to catch at it, he shrugged his shoulders, and rocking himself, said I am what I am, I am what I am: and, about six minutes afterwards, repeated the same words two or three times over.

Swift’s cry seems to erupt from someone who does not feel understood and yet wants to be accepted. It is the cry of someone who has changed beyond even his own recognition, but wants to find peace.   Swift raged in Biblical language because it is his language – he is the Rector of St. Patrick’s, after all, and well steeped in the King James Bible.  While God knows that Moses can never understand God’s nature but yet wants a relationship with him, Swift cries out in the same way to the people around him.

 Jorge Borges was also intrigued by Swift’s words.  Borges lists the following possibilities: “He may have felt, I will be miserable but I am, and I am a part of the universe, as inevitable and necessary as the others, and I am what God wants me to be, I am what the universal laws have made of me, and perhaps To be is to be all.” Borges combines these interpretations with the inclusive and; all possibilities are accepted (including that of being miserable) and all possibilities include acceptance of the inevitable.  One might take this existential statement to indicate that Swift has accepted his fate, the face in the mirror.  But he does not necessarily like it.  While God’s “I am” is presumably a statement of changelessness, Swift’s is perhaps the acceptance of change.  When Swift was a bit younger, he told a fellow writer that he was like some trees, in that he would “die from the top.”  One might wonder if he knew what was happening to him.

I think that “I am what I am” is a strong phrase, but it is painfully close to a phrase I hate: “It is what it is.”  When the latter slogan became ubiquitous at the turn of the twenty-first century, the word-czar William Safire coined the term “tautophrase” to describe such a self-evident statement.  “Facts are facts,” “what’s done is done,” and “it is what it is” are all inane tautophrases.  And so is, “I am what I am.”  And yet.  The phrase elicits some essence of our being that withstands age and circumstance.  It also calls for acceptance of all these things: our essence, our age, and our circumstances.  “I am what I am,” says the old lady.  “Obviously,” says William Safire.

 

Some (New) Mysteries of Old Age

I recently read two new murder mysteries involving old people sleuthing – the plots were amazingly similar, but the attitude was quite different.  It is worth considering the portrayal of old age in one of my favorite genres.

The two murder mysteries both concern the death of elderly people – intended and unintended.  In The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann, a self-made community of elders provides euthanasia services for one of their members, by (as she requested) shooting her when she wasn’t expecting it.  The plan goes astray when someone else gets the gun and muddies the waters by shooting unintended victims.  Since the gun belongs to one of their own, the senior community has to solve the crime before they are suspected – and they have to do it without admitting to their own involvement in the first death.  A little complicated, but it is made more so by the fact that almost all the older characters are… muddled.  Now a lot of us are muddled on occasion, but such confusion seems to define these characters – who are, to be sure, muddled in a variety of ways. In one scene the oldsters are about to go into the funeral of one of the victims, when one of them refuses to go in because they are wearing hats, and she does not have one.  “Nobody wanted to give up their hat, so they continued to stand around the taxi at a loss.”  The poor soul ends up wearing a tea cozy for a hat.  Cute, somewhat funny, but not much of a compliment to the characters.

In Leonie Swann’s previous mystery, which I liked very much, the detectives were a herd of very bright and interesting sheep – for the most part.  Some were – well – stupid and silly, but I took no offense when Swann portrayed foolish sheep.  She should have stuck to animals. Please note that The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp got marvelous reviews, so I am in the minority on this.  And it is a good story, a good read, and while I do not have any trouble acknowledging the quirks of elders, I do object when realism tips into caricature.

Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die is the fourth and latest installment in the “Thursday Murder Club” series.  Again, we have a carefully planned act of euthanasia, but it is a side plot and there is a careful line drawn between the undesired deaths and the desired one. Osman’s seniors are so skillful, that they have the local police working for them, and while they have their quirks, they are not strictly old folk quirks.  And yet, as one of the characters puts it, they work with the “urgency of old age.” The most touching thing is the camaraderie among them; they help each other out in mechanical and emotional ways and show the very best of what an elderly community can be – discounting the murders, of course.

One point here about the old in both of these novels – they must depend on one another.  When their children appear on site, things deteriorate badly.  Grandchildren are fine if they are young and not in the company of their parents.  But there is a consistent despair in relying on the next generation, and greater comfort in people that understand the joy and anguish of getting old.  Both authors sympathetically explore the issue of euthanasia, although Osman gives us the more realistic and rounded view of the complexity of end-of-life decisions.

But back to my review of these mysteries.  My opinion here is not that either of these mysteries is bad; but there is a difference between having protagonists who happen to be old and spinning your plot around the quirks of bumbling elders.  I do not mind oldsters in books who have senior moments or balance problems; I object to portraying these realities as silly.

Neither of these authors is aged; Swann is in her forties and Osman is in his early fifties.  Many mystery writers, like Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh, wrote well into their eighties, and for a model of senior detectives, no one can beat Miss Marple.

I have written very few mystery stories, and none involving the elderly, but if you have my predilection for the unsolved problem, you might enjoy “Essentials” or “No Change Orders.”

Bad Grandmothers and Wallowing in Old Age

Good grandmothers, society’s traditional grandmothers, have been defined by Hallmark: they bake cookies, love their grandchildren above all else, and are always available to babysit.  There are plenty of these good grandmothers in literature, but it is a welcome change to read about bad grandmothers.  Some bad grandmothers are selfish, some are just self-protective, but they all warm my heart.

First, the disclaimer.  I have eight grandchildren and I love them all.  But there are limits.  When they visit us, we put them (and their parents) in a hotel.  We refrain from birthday gift wish items of which we do not approve.  We almost never babysit.  On the other hand, we have traveled a lot over the years in order to have an opportunity to know them, for them to know us, and to watch them grow.

In our neighborhood, where there are many grandmothers, we sometimes take note of those grandmothers who stay home for Christmas instead of visiting progeny during the most hectic travel season.  Sometimes I am in that group and sometimes not.  We joke about it and call ourselves the “bad grandmas” as we sip our holiday eggnog, but it is humor tinged with guilt.  Aren’t we supposed to be hopelessly devoted to our offspring once and twice removed?  What is Christmas without greedy children hanging their stockings, crowded airports, and airlines losing your luggage?

But, back to fictitious grandmothers.  I just finished Margaret Drabble’s Witch of Exmoor.  You guessed it – the “witch” of the title is the grandmother, Frieda.  Frieda, who never had an excess of maternal feelings, has increased her distance from her offspring by buying a big, gothic, hard-to-get-to seaside house and then disappearing into it.  Her three adult children are angry, confused, and worried about their mother and about her will.  While Frieda does not have much in the way of traditional motherly love, she does appear to have money.  She published some successful books in her day, one of which is being turned into a movie if only they can find the author to sign the contract.

Frieda’s grandchildren see her disappearance as just another example of adults acting in inexplicable ways.  As Drabble explains, Frieda’s adult children have a more personal view:

…Frieda has turned the tables on them this time.  They are surrounded by friends who complain at length about the burden of visiting their aged relatives, their aunts with Alzheimer’s, their fathers grumpy with cancer or heart conditions or gout, their mothers whining about the treacheries of the past: none of them has a mother who does not want to see them.  It is against the natural order.

Frieda has made clear that she is fine on her own, and they pretty much leave her that way.  She is a delightful character, and it is a pity that she disappears in the middle of the book. (It turns out she has fallen off a cliff and drowned.) She has not stopped being a bad actor, though, as she leaves her fortune (not as large as her children suspected) to only one of four grandchildren.  Not only does this arouse outrage in the children, but it almost ruins the life of the one member of the family it was designed to benefit.  No one is happy.  (There is a lesson there.)

Frieda is a more malicious version of my very favorite “bad grandmother,” Lady Slane of Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent.  After years as the wife of a statesman, Lady Slane becomes a widow.  She has had it with adult children, big houses, and social obligations.  She remembers a lovely little house she once saw from a train, goes back to find it, buys it and moves in with her maid (of course, she has a maid).  She tells her family to stay away unless invited.  And then she spends her time entertaining a small circle of elderly men and sitting in deep revery about the life she has led.  It is one of the most delightful books of old age.  A fairy tale of senescence.  As in the Witch of Exmoor, we read much about the consternation of the adult children.  Who does their mother think she is anyway?  Doesn’t she know she owes them something?  No, Lady Slane acknowledges no unpaid debts; she has raised her children and now she is done, thank you very much.  After offers from her daughter to visit frequently and bring the grandchildren, Lady Slane answers firmly:

“…that is another thing on which I have made up my mind.  You see, Carrie, I am going to be completely self-indulgent.  I am going to wallow in old age.  No grandchildren.  They are too young.  No great-grandchildren either; that would be worse.  I want no strenuous young people, who are not content with doing a thing, but must needs know why they do it…. I want no one around me except those who are nearer to their death than their birth.

“I am going to wallow in old age.”  I love that woman.

But let me say this.  In these days when so many grandparents end up raising grandchildren because they have no other choice, perhaps it is unfeeling to exalt selfish grandmothers.  I honor the sacrifice that is made when old people do not have the luxury of carving out some space for themselves at the end of their lives.  There are many such grandparents, and I commend them.  They may not be blessed, but they are a blessing.

I do not really want to emulate Frieda or Lady Slane, but they are fun to read about.  There is something heady, especially for older women, about protecting the space we have finally “earned” after a lifetime of careers and child-raising.  When I look back on my days of rushing from work to daycare to the kitchen to feed my brood, I don’t know how I did it.  I’m enjoying a rest and some space in which to contemplate what has been and what is.  Children read about superheroes, even though they cannot really emulate them.   I read about feisty old women who have thrown guilt out the window.  It is a vicarious pleasure.

I have written about grandmothers many times before – you might look at “The Age of Grandmothers” or “A Grandmother’s Despair.”

Memento Mori

We all need to be reminded of things, and the older we get the more mnemonic aids are necessary.  We try to put everything on the calendar (and then try to remember to look at the calendar); we set up our computer to remind us of birthdays and anniversaries.  Doctors and dentists send us appointment reminders; Facebook sends us memories.  But, perhaps, what we really need help with are the more important things in life.

I recently re-read Muriel Spark’s wonderful Memento Mori. You probably know Spark from her Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; in Memento Mori she moves her observational skills to wonderful advantage from a Scottish boarding school to a set of oldsters. In the book, the very elderly characters keep getting solemn calls reminding them that they will die – no dates, no threats – just: Remember, you must die.  This, nevertheless, upsets the old people tremendously and they try all means (and suspect all kinds of people) to stop the reminders – the memento moris,  if you will.  Police are called, detectives are hired, snooping abounds.  But nothing can stop the calls.  And here’s the odd thing: the voices on the phone vary with each recipient.

There are rich and poor people in the book; the rich are having a lavish and catered old age, while their former servants live in geriatric wards run by the state.  They all get the calls.  Death is knocking at the door.  Why does it upset them so much?  Why do we know exactly how they feel?

Interestingly, I had just about finished drafting this blog when I read an interview in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review.  The “By the Book” subject was Tara Westover, a historian and the author of the bestseller Educated.  She was asked what classic novel she had only recently read, and answered with Spark’s Memento Mori and described the book:

A bizarre and dark little fable about aging and mortality – about economic abundance and emotional poverty.  I laughed out loud the whole way through.

“I laughed out loud the whole way through.”  This is the comment of a younger person (Westover is 36).  If you are old, you will empathize and perhaps grimace, but you will not laugh out loud.

Freud posited that the reason people felt most alive, most vital, in wartime, was because they were face to face with death all of the time.  Shouldn’t that also be true in very old age?  I wonder.

Memento mori has a long history.  You see skulls added to Dutch paintings to remind the viewer that the end is coming.  Cathedrals often had images of skeletons and the Last Judgement, cemeteries were put next to churches, and Buddhists often meditated in charnel houses – all to remind people that they are mortal.  It seems we have always needed that reminder.

When Longfellow was invited to his 50th class reunion at Bowdoin, he composed a long poem entitled, “Morituri Salutamus,” which means “We who are about to die salute you,” the salutation that the gladiators purportedly greeted their blood-thirsty audiences with.  It is a mediocre poem (for Longfellow at least), but he does exhort his elderly classmates not to forget their mortality and encourages them to look at the bright side:

For age is an opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress.

And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Longfellow does not quite identify what the “stars” of old age are, leaving us something to meditate upon.

The Buddha recommended five daily recollections to keep us centered on the truth of our existence and prompted his monks to recite them daily.  They are:

  1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
  2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
  3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
  4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
  5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Pretty negative, one might say.  And yet, doesn’t the transience of life make it more poignant?  Is the true suffering in recognizing that we will die or in spending our old age flailing against that reality?    Marx described religion as the “opiate of the masses” because it distracted people from improving the life in front of them.  Perhaps this is true for both civilizations and for individuals.  But as the mynah bird in Huxley’s utopian Island spent all day crying out “Attention” in order to pull listeners back to the present moment, so perhaps we should have something in our lives to remind us of our mortality.  You could do worse than to start with Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori.

Empty Boats, Mark Salzman, and Life Without Narrative

I have been reading various novels and memoirs by Mark Salzman – all of which I recommend highly.  But the one that has stayed with me longest is his last book, The Man in the Empty Boat, about a devastating year in Salzman’s life and the epiphany that he experienced at the end of it – with the help of a flatulent dog.

Our author explains the Zen parable of the empty boat, which I had remembered from a dharma talk long ago.  It is worth reprinting here:

If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty.
He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you. – Chuang Tzu

It is a story worth thinking about, but like most wisdom it probably cannot be internalized unless it is experienced. After a memoir of serious life experiences (births, deaths, success, and failure) – in which our author exposes a fantastic ability to describe such experiences, but a limited capacity for coping with them – Mark Salzman gives us his epiphany as he realizes that his dog is not releasing gas to annoy him, but just because he is… a dog.   The author shares his experience of realizing that all dogs are just dogs, and that all the boats are empty:

My normal sense of being the author of my life-narrative gave way and was replaced by a sense that I was the audience for it.  The author, I felt, had to be the cosmos as a whole, the vast matrix of who knows what and where and why, of which human consciousness is one part.  From that point of view, I could no longer believe that we determine what happens to us or choose who to be; we find out what happens to us.  We do what we must as we fall through time, which means – this is the feel-good part again – that we are doing the best we can, always. (146)

And, perhaps, we should treat everyone else as if they are doing the best they can.  We need to cope with life, of course, but the key lesson is that there is nothing/nobody to get angry at.  The boat is empty. Salzman laughingly calls himself a futilitarian. The interesting thing is that the author’s wife (this is a memoir, remember) refuses to let him teach their daughters about his epiphany – he can’t “deny the existence of human freedom and responsibility in front of the girls until they’ve finished high school.”  Hah!

And then there is this: Salzman’s life-narrative gave way.  Human beings love narrative – when there seems to be no narrative in a situation, we create it.  I have written about this before (insert title), but it seems that old people particularly like stories, narrative – they like to construct stories for their lives in retrospect.  We want it to make sense, and we especially want a happy ending.  Did fairy tales teach us to expect a happy ending?  Because, surely life did not.

So, we look for the happy ending in books, be it novels, spiritual guides, or the latest how-to-fix-your-life from the best seller list.  Salzman says in another wonderful book (The Laughing Sutra), “Enlightenment cannot be found in books.  It must be experienced directly!”  Ironically, of course, he say this in a book.  But for those of us who may have spent our lives trying to find answers in books, the likelihood that this is true hits hard.

Salzman wrote a number of books before he wrote The Empty Boat in 2012 and has published nothing since.  He must be in his sixties now – did he indeed find the answer and give up writing books?  I want to know if his epiphany stuck – I want to know if any epiphanies survive in the face of what life dishes out.   Where are you Mark Salzman?  You might not have all the answers, but you give me something to think about!

Old Folks and True Love

Since moving into a neighborhood of mostly retirees, I have been stunned by the exemplars of true love that I have encountered.  Not true love in the sense of mindless passion, but in the sense of real people doing superhuman things for the people that they are committed to.  True love is not determined by wine and roses – or even by white weddings and gender-reveal parties.  True love is sticking with someone you are committed to even when the passion is gone, even when it is not easy, even when they are not exactly sure who you are.

We think of true love as the province of the young; there are few classic stories of old lovers (and there are even fewer rom coms).  But there are some.  In his Metamorphoses, Ovid shares the tale of Baucis and Philemon, an old couple who live together in poverty with their pet goose:

They had married young, they had grown old together

In the same cottage; they were very poor,

But faced their poverty with cheerful spirit

And made the burden light by not complaining.

It would do you little good to ask for servants

Or masters in that household, for the couple

Were all the house; both gave and followed orders. (Humphries translation)

“Both gave and followed orders” – perhaps the recipe for a good  marriage.  Most old marriages do seem to have given up traditional delineations of responsibility – old women mow the lawn, old men run the vacuum.  They do what needs doing.

But, back to Baucis and Philemon.  As in many stories, the gods (Jupiter and Hermes in disguise) come to town and find no hospitality, find no doors open to them, until they get to the old couple, who dig into their meager stores to feed the unexpected guests.  When they realize they are entertaining divinity, they even decide to sacrifice their beloved goose to give the gods a good meal.  Zeus stops them from this act, saves their house when he floods the rest of the inhospitable town, and grants their wish that they may live together until they die, serving the gods.  Then, Philemon makes a final request: that they not outlive each other: “that I may never see the burial of my wife, or she perform that office for me.”  So, in due time, while they are “talking about old times,” they simultaneously metamorphize into trees – an oak and a linden – which stand intertwined.

Now, old couples might hope they die at the same time, but they seldom do.  What usually happens, in stages or spurts, is that one has to take care of the other through physical or mental infirmities.  It is not easy; it is often unbelievably hard.  Newborns and toddlers are tough on a marriage, but we know they are going to grow up (and be difficult teenagers) and eventually leave home.  And we were younger then.

In the enthusiasm of new love, younger folk may say, “I’d do anything for you!”  When they married, they swore to stick it out through sickness and health.  No one had any idea of what that all really might mean. Think of the old man who has to wake up to help his wife to the bathroom or clean up after her if she doesn’t make it.  Think of the old woman who has to tell her spouse for the 100th time that day that she isn’t his mother.  Then think of these same people holding hands on the porch.  This is life for many, and they seldom complain about it and almost never throw in the towel.

The divorce rate for elders has been increasing – from 1.4 to 6 per 1,000 for women and from 1.4 to 8 for men – but the rates for seniors are nothing compared to those for younger folk (which run closer to 20-50 per thousand).  I can’t think of any “gray divorces” among my acquaintances, but I know they do happen.  What happens more often, in my observation, is that commitment deepens with age. Once in a while, perhaps, a spouse gets sent to the memory care home or nursing facility sooner than we might think necessary.  But I never judge.  One cannot know what the demands have been or what the capabilities are.  For the most part, old married people are heroes.

And it is not just the big stuff.  There are also illnesses, joint replacements, falls, cataract surgery, and endless dental work.  There are special diets and walkers and installation of balance bars all over the house.  Sometimes the stress spreads equally over time between the partners; sometimes not.  But let’s call their devotion what it is: true love.

The presence of a purpose often seems to focus the caretaker’s life.  This does not mean it is easy or pleasant; nor should the challenge be underestimated.  Nevertheless, it is a common occurrence that the caretakers themselves do not live long after their duties are ended, their partners are gone.

So watch your romantic comedies, drool over white brides and roses, fixate on Romeo and Juliet.  But I know where the real romance is taking place, where “till death do us part” means something tangible, where “devoted” is a verb and not an adjective.

This week’s story is not about old love – if you want to read about that you might try “Again and Again and Again” or “Slip Slidin’ Away.”  But for a laugh and a ponder, there is this week’s “A Life of Twelve Toes in Six Pages.”  (Don’t ask me where I get these ideas!)