GETTING OLD
I went to church on Sunday at the Warren Wilson Presbyterian Church. As with so many main line churches the congregation was dwindling and there were only about 40 people in a church that would hold at least 500. And all of us were old, some of us quite old including the guest minister who must have been over 80 and a man who read a beautiful prayer who must have been over 90. The congregation was mostly over 70. This is a college campus and even though being the first day back on campus would excuse the low student turnout, the few students there were from overseas.
The low attendance doesn’t reflect the liveliness of the church. It is a lively church with lots of projects. The low attendance reflects a gradual change in American values. I imagine that most evangelical churches and many rural churches have good attendance. When I first came to Warren Wilson in 1965 church attendance was required of students and expected of staff and church on Sunday was overflowing. But Warren Wilson transitioned from being a college for rural mountain children to being a hippie college with wealthy liberal parents to the gay friendly college it is now. A church attendance requirement now would probably empty the college which, like all small liberal colleges, is competing for students from a dwindling number of college age students at a time when college loans are very unpopular. Younger people are gravitating away from main line churches. But there were almost almost no Warren Wilson staff there yesterday, either.
After church two former WWC teachers and a friend and I went out to eat at Panera’s. And we got to talking about the old age of the people at church and then old age generally. We were all in our 80’s and all widowed or widowers or single.
Three lived alone and one was in Highland Farms Retirement Community close by. We didn’t feel sorry for ourselves, but what we were all wrestling with was the huge transition that happens when the person you have been entwined with through marriage is no longer here. It changes everything and forces you into a radically new direction in life. I veered wildly away into constant travel such as the month long trip to Bogata I am going on in two days. Another couldn’t stand being alone in a big house and joined a retirement community. But generally we and our friends our age had aching knees or aching legs or some other infirmity that kept us housebound.
But whatever, this transition from being in the constant company of a loved one to being on our own was something we simply had never prepared for or even thought about and we had been totally unprepared. It was a big a transition as any in our lives, as big as leaving home and going to college, as big as dedicating ourselves to a workplace, as big as getting married and having children, as big as being empty nesters. In many ways it was the biggest transition of all. We have to adjust to slowing down and living with pain but most of all we have to find ways to fill every day with satisfying activities. In my case, and for most everyone, it was discovering that all the delight I had had through my life in collecting things suddenly was a curse, weighing me down. Instead of a lifetime of upsizing, now we had to downsize.
But in my case it is also making a radical transition to travel and other activities such as writing these posts that fills my days.
For me, anyway, it has been a transition to things that delight me and letting go of things that had become routine such as working to earn a living. So for me the issue is not losing the things that made life rich, but doing new things that make life rich. I’m not complaining. As long as I can walk and think I can have a great time.
The point I’m trying to make is that this transition is enormous and I dropped into it without ever giving it a thought. If I had thought more I would have not bought the 50 boxes of books in milk cartons or many of the things that I have to let go of. Some of them, if my children or grandchildren enjoy them will be a kind of gift. But most people like to choose their own things and not have things dumped on them. So, if I had been at all aware of what was coming, I would have been much more careful in what I bought.
Or maybe, looked at another way, big transitions are big opportunities. I had fun with the books, now I’ll let go with no regret. Letting go opens me up to adventures that I had no anticipation of but when they happen they can be extremely stimulating and make me feel very alive.
I confess that after getting my ticket to Bogata, and asking everyone I knew to accompany me because I wanted to have company, I wasn’t that excited about the trip. I let go and made the leap without knowing what would happen, another transition. And then Susie, my daughter, decided to come, first for two weeks and then for three. I still didn’t know what I was getting into. And then today we had lunch with Becca, a former student, who got me into this by telling me how great Bogata was. We went to her for advice and found she had only visited Bogata for four days and didn’t have too much to tell us except that she and her husband had had a great time. Then I came home and started reading about Colombia and the cities of Bogata, Medellin and Cartagena and the high mountains and rain forests and beautiful Caribbean beaches. And suddenly the whole adventure opened up. I don’t know what will happen but I’m sure it will be a marvelous leap into the unknown and be great fun.
So I guess there are two ways to deal with this huge transition into single old age. One would have been to carefully prepare by not buying all those books and filling my house up with stuff and to have carefully planned my old age (if I made it). But maybe it turns out that the best plan is just to have the time of your life entwined with a person you love and enjoying going to yard sales together and filling the house with things that bring you both delight. And then when that stage abruptly ends, without regret you dump everything out and leap into the next stage and see what it has to offer. This if my sixth overseas trip with Susie in the last three years and I know the next three weeks will be terrific fun. After that we will see what comes next.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 