Endings
Beginnings
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing
thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the
chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a
simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are
thin!")
I’ve had occasion recently to revisit T.S. Eliot’s masterful
stream-of-consciousness poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and since
several of the lines are currently impressed like skipping tracks of a vinyl
disc in my head, I decided to ease the repetition by writing a bit about that
whole subject—aging and the reflection on the meaning of what we have been.
In my case, the “with a bald spot in
the middle of my hair” would be understatement—by quite a bit—and “how his arms
and legs are thin” could be replaced with “how his midriff is preceding him,”
but I recall how my father’s clothes were all too big on him when he reached three
score and ten, and I can empathize with Prufrock. Besides his hypersensitivity about his changing
appearance, Prufrock is plagued by world-weariness, the “why bother” syndrome; why
keep up the rituals of coffee times and repetitive, mundane, silly
conversations:
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
Being “elderly” grants permission
to be honest, frank, impolite if necessary when faced with the same-old,
same-old of conversation for conversations sake, but will one have the courage?
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
But knowing finally
that we have settled for “shallow” in a universe that cries for “depth” may not
be of much use when the truth of the matter finally comes home to roost:
And would it have been worth it,
after all,
After the cups, the marmalade,
the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some
talk of you and me,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter
with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe
into a ball
To roll it towards some
overwhelming question . . .?
There
must be a word for that; I think it’s part regret,
part too late and part would it have made any difference.
Perhaps the right word is ennui.
Whereas old age used to be an arm’s-length,
somewhat mythical phenomenon belonging to a culture that was not mine, I now
live in its midst. I have come to appreciate what has been called the wisdom of age in, for instance, my
98-year old neighbour who recently bought herself a new house and asked me a
few days ago to help her locate the biography of Mahatma Gandhi’s wife because
she’s interested in the life of that forgotten woman. And I’ve seen its
opposite, the interminable assembly of jigsaw puzzles in seniors’ centre
foyers, the tedious search for tiny pieces of the universe that will fit, and
the exultation when a picture that was scattered has been made whole. What a
metaphor!
And yet, it’s hard to assign blame
to whatever sadness accompanies old age for many people. My mother-in-law
lamented as she approached 90 that all her bosom friends were dead. That
recognition alone must be daunting to even the strongest among us. I’ve seen
the powerful need to grasp whatever intimacy is left in the world in people in
nursing homes and seniors’ centres. I’ve seen how their eyes light up with the
hope that my entrance will mean someone to talk to, someone to attend to their
existence.
Our
institutions for the elderly are wrong, somehow. Like our prisons and hospitals,
they group people with similar needs together and isolate them from the
population. The reason for this might be obvious; we are so afraid of being
old, sick and/or terrified of deviance that we can’t stand to be reminded of
our fragility by seeing aging, by seeing illness, by seeing the variety of
hurts and angers that combined to make criminals. (I’m exaggerating for effect,
here.) Or else we just couldn’t possibly find the manpower to service their
needs except we house them close together.
Resignation
is the ubiquitous option, isn’t it? I find the penultimate lines in Prufrock as compelling as any in modern
poetry:
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor
was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that
will do
To swell a progress, start a
scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an
easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and
meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit
obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost
ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my
trousers rolled.
Perhaps
that’s the inevitable finale: I am not
Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be . . .. Resignation? Acceptance? Feeble
excuse?
Take your
pick.
Eat a
peach.
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