To me, my mama is still in her forties with the big hair and the big eyeglasses of the eighties. She is sitting on the front porch smoking Benson & Hedges cigarettes telling people “well, that’s what I said.” All of this while sipping a glass of sweet iced tea on a break from clipping the bushes and weeding the flower bed. She’s strong as an ox and opinionated. Never having been known as a woman who took direction well, she would be dancing to the beat of her own drum.
Years pass and age grows. But the mindset of youth remains. I remain the child and not the adult in our relationship. Until I don’t. Until I can’t. Until the roles are reversed. Always the caregiver and not the recipient, my mother doesn’t like her new role. I don’t mind the new role but I wish we could put things back the way they should be. Time should have paused about twenty years ago and we should both be in our respective roles.
But time is not obedient to the desires of our hearts. Time is a master at stealing the things we take for granted. Our youth, our memory, our health, our mobility, even the very breath that we breathe. There’s no rewind button and no reset button. We must experience, if we are lucky, old age as it comes.
Being old has its perks. I love a discount and can’t wait until I can join that part of getting older. But growing old has its frustrations and it’s disappointments. Our brain believes what we tell it. All these years leading up to getting old, we’ve told it that we are full of youth and vitality. Thus as we age, our brain doesn’t fully grasp the concept of being old. It doesn’t understand the failure of our body mechanics. Even as the brain becomes slower to respond, slower to process, it isn’t fully aware of what is happening. That is, until the body sends signals to make it fully aware of the condition.
I watch my mom struggle with her breathing and stumble with her feet. She doesn’t say it, because she’s still trying to be the stoic caregiver, but I know it makes her feel less in control. Every episode she has that sends her to the doctor or the hospital, she’s still trying to get used to being old. The years on the calendar don’t seem to be in the order as they should. She should still be yielding a machete to a stubborn red bud sprout or hauling a big catering job to the Methodist church. Not lying in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV or taking a breathing treatment from a respiratory therapist.
In her mind, this is the first time she’s been old. To her, being old sucks. To those who take care of multiple old people, this is the cycle of life. It’s the new normal for someone who’s been more active than people half her age. It’s a normal plagued with unfamiliarity and confusion. How did she get here and not realize it? By here, I mean the year in time that somehow doesn’t coincide with the year in her mind. To her, it’s shocking to find out that she’s old.
Age has, and will always be, a state of mind for her. The gap between the age she mentally wants to be and the age her body tells her she is, will always be arbitrary. The gray-white hair tells on her. It betrays the trust she once had in its roots. The thinness of her skin and the bruising from the blood thinners give the tell tale sign of aging. The secret is out.
But what those around her need to desperately understand is that this is her first time being old. She doesn’t know how this is supposed to feel or how she’s supposed to act. She only knows how this life has been up until this point and it’s looked vastly different. What she knew as normal isn’t normal anymore. What she is physically able to do isn’t the same as it once was. To someone with enough strong will to plow through a brick wall, this is just not right. Pouting is the only thing left to do.
If you know someone who is aging, don’t feel the need to tell them. We are all in that race, just different mile markers. Be patient with those who are experiencing old age for the first time. Spend the time you have with the mind one step ahead of the body. Let yourself bask in the things that you can do before the betrayal of time. The body and the mind will catch up soon enough, and you too will be old for the first time.
Messpot Diaries 