There is little good to be said for growing old. The little good that there is happens to be still being alive. In many cases, it beats the alternative. But not all. I may soon be able to write about things relating to my current job, an important part of which involves working with mainly, thought not solely, older people. Because of the nature of my job, these are usually unhappy stories that I am trying to make less unhappy. This is not easy, or necessarily possible.
The diseases I come across are almost all incurable. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntingdon’s, cancer, blindness. Some are worse than others, all are horrible, all make life increasingly difficult if not impossible. Many people, already swamped by overwhelming physical disease, are drowning in depression. No cure, no way out. This is how it will end.
“It wasn’t meant to be like this,” said one man, in his seventies. “I worked hard all my life and looked forward to a long and happy retirement. Then Parkinson’s came along. Now I can’t walk anywhere, can’t even read a book.” And so, he watches TV, all day and all night. Then, he struggles to bed, an agonisingly slow process. Don’t even ask about how this affects his toilet arrangements. Suffice to say, he can’t even get to the toilet. Other solutions have been found. Necessity nullifies the embarrassment and humiliation.
I see some happier stories, but they are all relative. Old age does not always wait until old age to have a terrible impact. You slow down, for all sorts of reasons, you lose confidence, you give up. Me? I try to pick you up, give you confidence. You still have something to live for.
Seeing what I have seen, knowing what I know now, I know, all to well, that time is running out. Although, on average, we are all growing older, not all of us will reach the average without something awful going wrong. How many glorious years will we get in retirement? I have met many, many people who never even got that far. They didn’t even reach the state retirement age, some not even close. May I remind you the state retirement age is getting higher. Of course, there are happy ever after stories, glorious examples of people who stay together for 60, 70 years who retain many of their faculties and then die in their sleep. Let’s not be too down about it. But why take a chance?
I am seeing one man I have seen before. He was great fun, full of cracking stories. The trouble was they were the same stories every week and the next week he could not remember the last. Some weeks, he had no idea who I was. And he is not much older than me.
Care homes, sheltered accommodation – it’s where the money is. When we are young, we look at old people and don’t imagine that one day that will be us. We see old people with dementia and feel so sorry for them. How horrible that must be. We hope it will not be us. Even in middle age, when we can feel ourselves slowing down, albeit slowly but surely. We hope it’s just slowing down, odds are they are, just naturally.
I’m trying to turn this potential sadness into a happy story. I know that nothing I have written here sounds optimistic, but stay with me. What I see and everything I learn tells me we must enjoy the day. If work is the thing you enjoy most and you never want to retire, then that’s just great. Work until you drop. If work is the thing you enjoy least, just remember the clock is ticking, bad things could happen and happen soon so you must get on with doing what you want to do. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. I used to be in that middle. I would work until it was retirement time, then I’d go as soon as I could. I got very lucky. I was able to retire from full time work almost a decade before it was genuinely OAP time. If I’d known before what I know now, I’d have gone before.
All my working life, I have worked with people who have had money and others whose raison d’être was money, that big house, that flash car, that glamorous holiday. I still see people like them today, but many of them are well into the long decline, some slowly, some very quickly. Others not even knowing they’re ill. Oh cruel earth. She giveth, she taketh away.
What’s the message? It’s garbled, of course it is. Everything that is happening is by accident. None of it was meant to happen, nothing was part of some grand design. Our birth, our death, the whole works. Actually, it’s more complicated than that because our forefathers and mothers carted around some dodgy genes that they unkindly handed down to us. Beware your grandmother’s heart trouble, your grandfather’s susceptibility to cancer. And if there is Huntingdon’s in the family, live for today and start living this very second.
I have discovered what carers do, how many carers there are and how society puts its collective fingers in its ears and cries “la la la”. Imagine the one you love doubled over in pain, unable to communicate and carry out even the most basic functions, unable to move freely, if at all, imagine her or him being in a near vegetative state. This could be the future and this is where the Thatcherite dream of having it all and having it now and not giving a shit about anyone else falls down. Because one day, there must be a thing called society.
I have seen how the future has panned out for many people. For some it has been good, for others it has been bad, and happy and sad. It always ends in tears because we all die.
Think of all the good things you have and the good people you love. Remember that nothing lasts forever and tomorrow can be another day at work or another day doing what you want to do with the person you love.
Don’t bet that you will live forever. The evidence suggests you won’t. And, as well as love, money can’t really buy any of the things you really need.
