Growing Older

I have the privilege of working in a retirement and assisted living community and the other day one of the residents asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Interesting question I said and that I would ponder it and let her know.

Old Age, I decided, is a gift.

I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Ok, maybe not my body! I sometime despair over the shape of my body, or especially when I am taken aback by that old person that has taken up living in my mirror (who looks like my father!), but I don't agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating a little extra, not picking up the paper. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be lazy.

I have seen too many friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until late at night or to take a nap at noon?
Yes, on occasion I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60&70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep a movie like A Walk to
Remember or A Walk in the Clouds... I will.

I will walk the beach in shorts that expose my lily white legs, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.

Yes, I know I am sometimes forgetful. My mother always warned be about being care of who I hung around with. She said I would become just like them. Could it be true? The people I hang out with five days a week have gray hair and are forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. Besides, I eventually remember the important things. It's just the computer passwords that give me a problem.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? It's the broken hearts that gives us strength and understanding and compassion. Somewhere I read that a heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I feel so blessed to have lived long enough to have my remaining hair turn gray, some even say silver, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. How many people have never laughed? How many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As I get older, it is easier to be positive. I care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.
It is in the second 60 years that we can begin to really enjoy life in what former Seagram's CEO Edgar M. Bronfman calls "The Third Act." Who knows, maybe we will get to attend our 100th high school reunion.

So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be.

And if I feel like it, I will eat dessert every single day.