Sometimes, I look at my 75-year-old husband and wonder if I am married to an old man. The young woman I was protested that he could be my father! But, of course, he couldn’t. I’m married to an old man because I am an old woman. I’m 67. And no, even if people tell you that’s “the new 47,” it isn’t. There is no “new 47.” 67 is still 67, and 67 is old.
Young people throw around memes like "I've fallen and I can't get up." Let me assure you, those stop being so funny when it’s your husband lying on his back, with his head in the hallway and his legs in the bathroom, truly unable to get up. It becomes even less funny when you realize you also can’t lift him. Age is cruel that way.
It’s even crueler now that society has forgotten the one consolation prize that always came with age: wisdom. I and those like me are casting about the world, full of life stories no one wants to listen to and besieged by technology (which we shun) and doctor’s appointments (which we detest). Compared to young people, we can’t keep up. You want to know how bad it is? Some of my friends still carry around a flip phone. Cue the gasps from any millennials or Gen Zers reading this article. I know. I get it. Believe it or not, I even sympathize a little: my 80-year-old sister finally got an Android which, despite my limited knowledge, I’ve helped her to navigate, while teaching her to set up Facebook so that she could keep up with friends and family. It took work. It took love. It took patience. And young people, we need all three from you.
I know to you, we seem slow. We don’t mean to be; it’s just that as we get older, time moves faster. Really. Look it up. This is a mathematical fact. I get up at 6 AM, and it still feels like the day vanishes before it begins. Hours become minutes. Minutes become seconds. Seconds are a theoretical construct, except that there aren’t enough of them in the day.
But more than this, I want the young people reading this to understand something: we don’t look down on you. We are in awe. You social media influencers, podcasters, and political organizers, with your practically bottomless energy, and drive, and technological knowledge which would make our head spin, but which comes to you as easily as breathing, you are miraculous. if I were young again, I would be just like you, and I feel such deep appreciation that unstoppable forces like you exist to save our changing world. I’m grateful you can keep up. Because I can’t; everything is moving way faster for me than it is for you.
You may think that because time moves slower for you, you can slam the brakes on it more easily. Take it from me: you can’t. There are no brakes. Middle age may creep up on you, but old age comes frightfully fast. One day you’re middle-aged, the next, surprise! You’re old! And because you’re old, the exit door moves closer and you become more curious than ever before about what awaits you behind it. You may even pick up that dusty Bible again, which you should, if only to escape the fact that your mirrors are now funhouse distortions of your former self, and skeletons keep jumping out of your closets because somehow your clothes no longer fit.
What’s more, you have never been more helpless. Your survival depends on the government; on Social Security and Medicare, because you are too feeble to work. Worse still, you realize you wasted your chance to make the mark on the world you wanted. You wanted to be a microbiologist but spent your life as a legal secretary. You wasted the control you had over your life, and the only thing remaining – the end – is something you can’t control at all. And then, one day, it comes.
For “average Americans,” which is to say most of us, this is what the arc of life looks like. It’s not universal. Many vibrant, intellectual and quick-witted elderly folks continue to live long and viable old-age scenarios. But typically, unless you live in a senior community, you will eventually find yourself in a situation where everyone is younger, walks faster, and seems infinitely savvier.
“Retire,” you say. Okay, with what? Yes, a lot of people my age are wealthy, but just as many are not, and while averages might tell one story, the reality at the individual level is much different. For most of us, our bucket list is now an empty bucket; and thank God it’s empty, because we’ll need it when we move into that van down by the river on the Island of Old People, which is essentially real life’s version of the Island of Misfit Toys. Biden’s economy is destroying you by making it impossible to accumulate wealth and assets, and it’s destroying us by making what we have accumulated worthless. You think we don’t want you to fix this? Please. We’re begging you to fix it; none of us wants to die feeling that the last act of our lives was tragic.
That is, assuming we die with dignity at all, which in this terrifying world is far from certain. I fear senior facility pods attended by young woke “caretakers” who dismiss my abuse.
“Okay, boomer, check your privilege,” their accusing eyes will say as I’m beaten with my cane, or as an Angel of Death steals my last moments. “It’s your fault I’m still living in my parents’ basement.” You think I wouldn’t love to move into my parents’ basement? I can’t. Mom and Dad are dead, which I guess makes me technically an orphan.
So yes, I am pleading with you young, strong, conservative, brilliant, outspoken and energetic fighters to save my generation from a fate like that, not only for our sake, but so that no generation, including yours, ever has to fear it. And sooner or later, we all will. No one lives forever, even if you think you will now. Unless you have the endowments of Queen Elizabeth II or Sophia Loren, you will not age gracefully, either. And no, Botox and plastic surgery won’t help; if anything, it’ll just make you look stupid and grotesque.
So really, this is my plea to the young people who seem ever more inclined to treat my generation as an afterthought or a hindrance: We want you to keep up the good fight. We wish we could fight it with you, but the world moves too fast. However, we remember what it was to fight. We were you once, and we want to help you be better than us. Love us. Listen to us. I promise, age does bring wisdom, particularly to those of us who’ve made mistakes. And if you don’t believe that, then at least listen to your wisest compatriots – the ones who tell you things like “be a rebel and start a family.” Oh, and make sure to brush your teeth. Because this time, if they fall out, there are no replacements. Just like there are no automatic updates to your software to show you how to use an iPhone when you’re used to a black-and-white TV.
But above all else, enjoy the future. It’s the one thing you can be sure of; the one thing we would give anything to share with you.
