My ninety-two-year-old aunt once told me she still felt sixteen inside. Her body just did not work as well. She also expressed incertitude about that old woman looking back at her in the mirror. Who was she anyway? I begin to understand what she meant now that aging has set in. It creeps up on one. Subtle and sly.
Not sure when I began to feel the aging. Perhaps it was this summer when I set about raising the cement blocks for my walk to the studio. Enormously heavy, they assumed a not-so-even surface this time. Or, perhaps, when I perched on the ten-foot ladder to clean the eavestroughs this spring. We decided to replace those, equipped with gutter guards.
The topic of aging has occupied much time this year as we put our names on the list for Centre de santé, an independent living space, and redid our wills. We set about discovering how one copes with the changes, the lack of energy and diminishing strength. In pursuit of wisdom, we attended a retreat “A Spirituality of Transformation” with Ron Rolheiser.
Father Ron is an Oblate priest and a super talented presenter. He kept us laughing while dishing out some challenging truths. He talked about life in general and how we try to find ourselves during our younger years. Then as we mature, we give ourselves away taking care of family, friends and community. A third phase has just recently caught the attention of writers and philosophers: aging. Perfectly logical since we now have an expected lifespan into our eighties, nineties and beyond.
We now live in an age that tries to avoid the topic of aging all together as we chase various means to create an illusion of youth instead of embracing the wonder of wisdom. We need Elders, sannyasa or holy old fools to guide us. I highly recommend the trilogy by Father Ron covering all three phases of life. “Holy Longing”, “Sacred Fire” and “Insane for Light” are all very readable. The last one concentrates on how we might give our life and even our death away as a gift to those around us.
So now, as I grapple with my own aging process, I will recognise my losses, mourn them, forgive myself frequently, celebrate my successes and endeavour to gift my life to those around me. All is well and all will be well.
