No one really tells us how we're supposed to age, how much fighting against it and how much acceptance of it is the right balance. No one tells us how we're supposed to feel when the body grows softer and the hair grayer, how we're supposed to consider the craping of the skin or the wrinkles on the face that make our smiles feel unfortunate. Poet Dylan Thomas told us we should rage, rage against the dying of the light, that old age should burn and rave at close of day. He died, sadly, before turning 40. For those of us well past that mark, rage feels futile, like a misallocation of energy. There is, after all, a beauty in aging.
I remember a call, a few years ago, from a longtime friend who said it looked as if her father was about to pass away. I remember meeting her, along with another friend, at her father's elder care facility so she wouldn't have to be alone, and seeing the way her tears fell on his face as she stroked his cheeks and cooed his name, the way she collapsed in the hallway on our way out, screaming, not knowing if that night would be his last. He survived, and has survived several near-death experiences since, but I saw my friend's struggle with her father's health difficulties as a precursor to what might one day be my struggle with my parents' aging and health challenges. And it was. Soon after that harrowing night at the elder care facility, my mother, who lives alone, suffered a stroke.
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