IT IS a relatively new question for the human race. A quick look back in time reveals that the Old Stone Age offered an average life expectancy of 33 years. By the 17th century, it was 48; the 18th century, 56; the 19th century, 62. Present life expectancy in the UK is 81 years, although many will live for longer. I know an undertaker who regards anyone who dies in their seventies as “dying young”.
Things have changed. When I was young, you lived a little past your retirement, a few years of grace, and then you died. You weren’t a problem to anyone, neither your family nor the State. The Beatles sang “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” They imagined that to be very old. But what about 94, which is common enough now? There were no grandparents in the Old Stone Age. Now, we have great-grandparents and multiplying care homes.
Longevity of life is a mixed blessing. There is joy in this story, but also struggle. Not only must the elderly cope with being less in demand and less productive, wherein lies a sense of worth for many; they must also handle being a drain on everyone else’s resources. Governments struggle with the financial implications, and so do families. “I can manage an hour a week for my parents, after the parkrun,” said a busy dad. “It’s a war zone. They don’t get on at all.” It wasn’t like this in the Old Stone Age.
It has been called “the curse of medicine”, which offers longevity of life, but with no promises about quality. We used to have a care home next door, and we’d hear residents in the garden, taken for walks by the staff. But these walks have stopped, because no one now has the physical capacity. Residents spend their time in the communal lounge, or in their rooms, “variously conscious”, as one carer put it. A man visiting his father told me: “I said goodbye to him a long time ago.”
“So who do you visit now?” I asked. “A memory, I suppose — and one I find it increasingly hard to remember.”
SO, HOW will we grow old? How do we manage the measured crucifixion of gradual loss — the disintegration of status, identity, and role, and of physical and mental capacity?
Some will, perhaps, reinvent their past to provide solace, puffing up their back story, summed up in the line: “The older I get, the better I was.” Others might go in the opposite direction, allowing quiet despair into the narrative. As a retired priest once said to me, “My life feels like nothing more than a misspent half-hour.”
The ageing process is letting go of things that we once had. We used to do a lot, we were in demand; but the season is different now, and, instead of doing, increasingly we are done to. Our pay, which we used to work for, is provided by our pension. Our garden, in which we battled heroically, is handled by a gardener. We exist on a plethora of pills, and need help with the stairs and putting on our socks. We do not all age like Sir David Attenborough.
Friends and family may applaud us for “staying active”; for we do not go gentle into that good night. Yet they didn’t feel the need for such applause in our younger days. It’s a sign of the times.
Jesus never grew old. But he knew what it was to be handed over and to have his power removed. In The Stature of Waiting, W. H. Vanstone throws searching light on the change in Jesus after his arrest, as he moves from doing to being done to. In Gethsemane, a new path is chosen. From here on, he initiates nothing, but becomes the object of other people’s decisions and actions.
This is nowhere more clearly revealed than in Jesus’s words on the cross: “I thirst.” In former times, Jesus had been the initiator of help for the thirsty: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” But now the situation is reversed, and he is the one in need; and others must help. Roles are reversed; he is helpless. And, for many, his glory never shone so bright as in those days.
NO TWO human stories are the same. We decline in different ways and at different speeds; it can be brutal, it can be gentle. But, however it is experienced, decline is the reality as we approach the finish line, and reality is somehow to be embraced.
If we are at war with reality, we are unhappy. Rose, who is 88, has lost many of her powers, but she blames the doctors rather than her age. She imagines that, if she had a good doctor, who took proper care, her health would return. She struggles to accept the reality of growing old, and lives with significant resentment.
The truth is that we have always been dependent on others, from the cradle to the grave. In every realm of existence — physical, emotional, practical, legal, spiritual, and financial — we have needed help. Dependence is not a new story for anyone. It just arrives with more savagery towards the end, and finds some of us unprepared.
But the diminishment of our powers brings no diminishment of worth. I remember an awkward meeting of church leaders, in which, for a while, theological rigour trumped humanity. We then became conscious of a banging sound and screaming in the street below. It was a little boy, shut out of his home. He was crying, hammering desperately on the door. Theological battles melted as we confronted helplessness. It was agreed that I would go to see if there was anything I could do. But, just then, the door opened, and the boy ran inside.
Our meeting was not the same after that. Theological red lines had been superseded by compassion, created by helplessness. In the street below, we never once imagined the powerless boy to be worth nothing.
For many, the diminished figure of Jesus on the cross — the epitome of hopelessness — is the most powerful expression of his worth. And it may be that you have seen the remarkable alchemy in the loss of someone’s powers. I am reminded of Jim, who recently died of cancer, but who, in his final months, was almost translucent with glory, like an old stained-glass window, transfused by the weak winter sun.
Simon Parke is a counsellor and writer. His books include Gospel: Rumours of love (Books, 17 May 2021).