Is Old Age a Gift?

Is Old Age a Gift?

I got a message from a friend Barbara Pauls with a post that tried to make the case that old age is a gift.

Is it?

I look at myself and I generally don't feel any different from when I was 60 or 50 or 40 or 30.

I can't say I'm the same way I was when I was 20 but that's probably a good thing as you'll see if you read my forthcoming collection of poems True Confessions (Darkhouse Books)?

But is old age a gift?

If it is, it gets to be less so as you move on.  At least that's the way I see it from the people I saw aging.

My dad grew up on a farm and spent years in a concentration camp, and he was always working and laughing until his last years when he didn't have the strength to go into his garden and water the beautiful flowers he had planted in his home in Arizona.

My mom too felt her age.  At the end, when she was in her 80s, she couldn't stand up out of her wheelchair, and she didn't have the hope that had fueled her in the concentration camps and in the US when we came her as refugees.

I'm sure that this isn't the way age hits all of us, but this is what I saw in the aging people I loved the most.

Anyway, I sent my facebook friend  Barbara Pauls a note.  I said that finally all we can hope for is that old age is a gift and it lets us feel that gift for us long as it will.

And I sent her a link to a poem I wrote for the Atticus Review about why we age.  If you follow the link, you'll see the poem and you can hear me reading it in my not so old man's voice.

https://atticusreview.org/why-do-we-age/
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