"I See Old People"

By Kim Brittingham

Over the years I've heard anecdotes about how actors make themselves cry on cue.

Supposedly, Shirley Temple's mother could get the kid sufficiently riled by pulling her aside on the set and harshly berating her "as if" she'd done something to displease Mommy.  And I remember reading Melissa Gilbert's "Little House" tricks in Tiger Beat -- but sadly, folks, I can't remember what they were.

The ease with which I turn into a blubbering mess can vary a good deal depending on the time of the month.  I teared up for "The Iron Giant", for God's sake!  Not only was he a robot -- he was ANIMATED!  But some other week, I might've rolled my eyes and mimed gagging.

But there's one thing that's 110% guaranteed to make me sob instantly.  And I do mean instantly.  Immediately, without hesitation, and hard.

Just show me an old person who looks helpless.

A couple of years ago, my friend Jim moved into a new apartment, and I was on my way to visit him there for the first time and christen it with a pizza delivery. From the taxi window I saw an elderly woman with a dramatic case of osteoporosis, walking completely stooped over, her head about 18 inches from the ground.  She didn't even have a cane.  She shuffled along the busy avenue, placing one foot tentatively in front of the other, slowly, and carried a plastic shopping bag from each gnarled hand.  She wore a dirty pink raincoat, unbuttoned and flapping open in the cold wind because no doubt it wouldn't close properly around her bent body.

I started sobbing hysterically, on the spot.  Why was she carrying those bags all by herself?  Why didn't she have a walking stick or a scooter, or a decent coat?  Where were her children, her grandchildren?  Did she have far to walk?  Did she have stairs to climb?  Did anybody love her?

Arriving at Jim's swank high-rise, I approached the uniformed desk attendant.  There was no point in hiding the fact that I'd been crying -- it was just too obvious.

The attendant was a mustached man in his fifties, with dark, bushy eyebrows and sympathetic eyes.  He took one look at me and said,

"Miss, miss!  What is wrong?"

"I...I just saw an old lady..." I stuttered, wiping the wet distortion from my eyes.  "She was all bent over with a humpback and she was walking all alone and I know I look like an ass right now but I just feel so...so sorry for her!"  I broke down all over again.

He didn't look at me like I was nuts.  Instead, he nodded, a vigorous, knowing nod.

"Oh yes, that is so, so very sad.  But don't say you are an ass, no no no.  That is a sad thing.  It makes me sad to see it too.  Here, miss, have a new tissue."

I pocketed the disintegrating scrap of snotty fluff in my hand and took his offering, and blew.

"Um, thank you.  Uh, I'm here for Mr. Kloster, in PH2A."

He called up to Jim and gestured me towards the elevator.

"Go right up," he said sweetly.  "And try to have a good evening."

He never forgot me after that.

It doesn't always take a bent back or a shabby coat to crush me, either.

I had a similar experience at a roadside buffet somewhere between D.C. and Philadelphia.  I'd gone on a one-day bus trip to the capital with an aunt and a cousin.  The buffet was part of the package.

There was a little old white-haired woman working in the dining room, clearing trays from the tables and wiping up with a soppy gray rag.  She shuffled stiffly around the room in a humiliating polyester uniform with coordinating brown visor.  The sight of her making her way from table to table carrying those ugly plastic trays -- with rounded back, thick orthopedic shoes, shuffle-shuffle-shuffle -- made me break down in my mashed potatoes.

"Kim...Kim, what's the matter?" my aunt asked.

"It's that old lady over there," I choked.  "What's she doing working in a place like this at her age?  She should be sitting on a porch swing surrounded by grandchildren, with an apple pie cooling on the window sill.  Doesn't anybody care about her?  Doesn't anyone love her?  What a sad place to end up!"

My aunt looked at me like I was nuts.

Then she said, "Well, maybe she wants to work here."

"I know I know, I already thought of that," I said, looking around at some other oldsters doddering across the dining room in synthetic yellow and brown. "I hope she's here voluntarily.  I hope she does this to stay active and be with other people.  But if she's here because she has to be, that would break my heart."

I'm grateful that my own beloved grandmother was lovingly looked after right up 'til the end.  One of my uncles lived with her for decades and waited on her, willingly and devotedly.  She was never alone, and all her basic needs were met.

But until recently, except for the occasional emotional breakdown at the mere sight of a struggling old person, "oldness" wasn't a topic at the forefront of my mind.

Now I'm surrounded by peers whose parents have gone from middle-aged to completely dependent, incontinent, and infantile, practically overnight.

It's shocking how one slip down a short flight of steps can turn a freewheeling, stylish silver fox into a helpless little old lady.  How in one year, an active senior Casanova can become a withered shell of a man whose dementia's turned him into the sort of demanding prick he never would've been in...well, "life".

It's everywhere I turn.  Adults in their late 30s through 40s, having to deal with parents who are suddenly "old people".  Old people who can't be left alone, who need constant care.  Only a lucky few can afford to move to first-rate senior facilities akin to cruise ships that never sail, with multiple dining rooms and talent shows and a registered nurse for every other resident.  How many kids can afford to quit their jobs and look after Mom and Dad?  How many can afford to hire someone trustworthy to look after Mom and Dad so they can continue showing up for work?  It's scary to think about.

It's also scary to think about getting that old.

I can certainly feel for those in physical pain and discomfort, but what bothers me most is seeing an old person in fear.

I saw that happen to my grandmother, even though she had care.  After her dementia set in, there were times when her own confusion panicked her.  She used to ask over and over again, "When am I going home?" and my uncle would repeat for the hundredth time, with saintly patience and tenderness, soothing her: "You are home, Mom."

There have been times when I swear I nearly forgot my own age ("Am I 37 or 38?  What am I now...?") or forgot the name of someone I see all the time, or forgot the lyrics to a Duran Duran song (gasp!), and I felt a little jump of fear in my chest at having lost some small piece of myself.  A piece of my world had dissolved while I wasn't paying attention.  I thought it would always be there -- all of it.   Frightening: concrete, stone, the earth itself, crumbled like a cheese puff between the thumb and forefinger of Time, and its dusty bits blown carelessly out into space, as though none of our personal shit ever mattered.

We used to laugh at our parents for calling us by our brothers' and sisters' names, and pout when at 7:00 they were already "too tired" to drive us to the movies.   But now I'm there: at that inevitable place of understanding.  I can see myself becoming old someday.  It used to seem too far away to believe.

And admittedly, I'm concerned, not so much about dying, but about dying unhappy.

As much as I like to believe in a collective consciousness, and a place in the universe where that consciousness is perfect, contented and free, I'm dismayed when I see people dying painfully, miserably, alone, unfulfilled -- and I wonder, when they pass over, do they revert to that placid place of nothingness and home from before they were earthly-born and given a label, or do they carry on in some malcontent form, chain-rattling maybe, tormented as when they left off, joints aching, mind flickering, plagued with regret, mocked by their own disobedient bowels?

I'd like to believe that in exchange for life's crappy ending, when we're suffering and in total decline, that we get some reward on "the other side".  If not a meadow of wildflowers with our loved ones frolicking in wait, then at least a place of numbness and silence.

I have no answers now.  I don't know if I'll die alone and neglected with a sad lump of cat food in my belly.  I don't know if I'll go peacefully in a warm fluffy pink aura, surrounded by well-dusted photo frames like old Rose in "Titanic".  Nor do I know how my generation is going to cope with its elderly, or how we're going to pay for being old ourselves.

But if this blog sounds like a downer, never fear.  There is a happy ending.

Because in all our uncertainty, we do have one thing for sure:  we have now.  If you can get yourself out of bed in the morning, if you can carry yourself to and from work, you're lucky.  If you can take a deep breath, if you can digest a taco, you're lucky.  While you may be losing your youth a little more each day, take what you still have and enjoy it.  Embrace it.  Employ it.  Run hard, speak freely, lick the spoon.

And as long as you've got an able body, use it now and then to help somebody less able than you.  You just might get it back someday.

* * *

Links to recent blogs:
Frosty: A Family Christmas – November 30, 2007

Lust, Kindergarten & Davy Jones – October 20, 2007

An Angel in Bennigan's – September 30, 2007

Day Job Believer – September 12, 2007

Clueless in Philadelphia – September 2, 2007