Shouts From Down Under

Age the terrorist

An old person is growing into my body.

There are the first few years when some moment will become the earliest memory you retain. It could be an indelible traumatic incident or a mundane strange thing to imprint on your developing mind. Sometimes I wonder if our earliest "memory" even exists - it could be just something we imagined happened, heard our parents, siblings or someone else describe in later years, or something we saw happen to someone else.

In a few more years we have those school years when we are supposed to learn the boundaries, how to do things, socialise, rules of warfare whether it be love or taxation time. Then it's on to the rebellious years when we mistakenly think we are "independant" and can make some sort of statement by doing forbidden things.

Career or lack of is next, possibly one or two relationships, most likely a disastrous one and then perhaps marriage. If our luck and motivation are still hanging in there, if we haven't grown up in a ghetto born to drug addict parents, we move on to buying a house from a bank. We pay three or four times minimum back what we borrowed in the first place.

If our health has been good up til now, apart from chance injury or copping malaria while overseas in PNG, or we haven't been killed in a car crash or from the dreaded cancer, we may be blessed with grandchildren.
IF we've married, had children, they are still alive, we are still alive and they still talk to us. Or Vice Versa.
IF.

Then (ok I'm really trying not to be cynical with EVERYTHING ok?) If we get to here, and haven't Gone To Jail and collected $200, or the bank hasn't still got a monopoly on our mortgaged house, then now we should be reasonably comfortable and have GRANDKIDS!.

Should we be financial in these afternoon hours of our life, we probably have good / false teeth, getting our hearing tested by now, another pair of glasses maybe. We may have arthritus showing its ugly aches and pains, a dicky knee and thinking about x-rays for a "bad hip".

As I said, an old person takes our body hostage.

Inside all this decaying, shrivelling arthritic body, with its failing faculties, sagging bits, failing immunity and dodgy forgettory, is a young person, a psyche that valiantly tries to refuse these limitations.

Inside, we are still YOUNG. I'll say it again. YOUNG!

I first realised this some time ago and looked at older people, particularly the very elderly 80+ years, with a fresh appreciation. As a young / youngish person, for some unknown reason, it takes a real effort to STOP. Take as much time as is needed, to sit next to an elderly person, or at least look at them. Look in their eyes and SEE. There is a young person still in there, trapped within that (sometimes) hideous body and wrinkled blotchy wasted face.

There is a spark of youthful vigour that indicates this inner young 'un. Often the only indication I can see of it, is in their eyes.

The thing is, if you take the time and exercise patience, and LISTEN to their stories of the past, hear the memories they relate of "the bad drought of '72, the bushfire in '54 and the old "DeSoto" we drove to town once every couple of months for flour, sugar and tea...
If you listen to them tell you about their lives you'll realise it's still very real to them.

Now that I've grown older myself, had my hearing tested today and OK OK! I know I'm not ancient and don't have arthritis yet and only a bit of hearing loss, but I'm realising how it is for those elderly folks. Their memories aren't back in those years before we were born! To them its only a few days ago. Memory is a strange thing that seems to flare up the older you get.

Those happenings further in your past swap around and instead of remembering where you left your glasses or hearing aid batteries, instead you can clearly remember when Millie your school friend fell over and hurt her knee at school, or when your Uncle roused on you when you were 5 years old for spilling something poisonous, of his, in the toolshed.

Well, I'd finish this blog, but I've forgotten what I was going to say...

Sparky