2023 Aging Gracefully

Aging Gracefully

2023, Steven B. Zwickel

Coping with Losses

What I have learned about growing older is the importance of dealing with losses. As you get older, you lose people, places, material things, and the groups and associations you once belonged to you.

💔 No question that these losses can be painful. It hurts to lose relatives, friends, co-workers, schoolmates, and others, some more than others. The closer you are—or were—to someone, the more it will hurt. A “Broken Heart” is more than a metaphor; losing someone you really care about can cause physical pain as well as deep sadness.

There are no rules for how to grieve a loss. It will be different, and take differing amounts of time, for everyone. I think it is extremely important to remember this, because I have heard about people saying things like, “Are you still dealing with that?” and “That’s all ancient history, so get over it.” Don’t let anyone tell you to “Snap out of it” or to rush you when you are dealing with the emptiness of a personal loss.

I am old enough now to remember when computers were actually used for computing, so I feel comfortable offering my opinion about what it means to age gracefully. I think people who find a way to come to grips with the many losses in their lives are the ones who are able to make the most of their years. And those who can’t find a way to accept their losses, who obsess about the past and fret about what might have been do not do as well.

I am not sure if there is such a thing as “aging gracefully” but I think it is worth trying to find a way to accept the “slings and arrows” that life is sure to throw your way. It helps, of course, if you have done your best to be a kind, considerate person. You will have much less to regret as you get older. 

The pain may never go away and it will hurt more when you lose the people with whom you had the closest relationships. But remember that you would not have had those relationships had you not been worthy of other people’s love and respect. 

Nostalgia or Delusion?

To continue with my theme of how people deal with the losses in their lives, I will turn to how some Americans deal with the loss of their connections to their ancestral homes.

America is a “nation of immigrants” we are told and there is lots of evidence that many people here feel some kind of connection to the “old country”, wherever that was. As I studied the history of different immigrant groups (in 2020) I came across many examples of this longing for the people, places, and customs that immigrants to America left behind. Irish-Americans long for the Auld Sod, descendents of Italian immigrants want to “return to Sorrento”, Mexicans sing “Canción Mixteca”, Scots have “Caledonia”  etc. 1

It’s not just people who are descended from European immigrants. Recently I had the opportunity to see a reading of a wonderful play, “The Barber and the Unknown Prince” by Gavin Dillon Lawrence. The characters in the play are mourning the impending loss of their Black neighborhood in Washington, DC. They talk a lot about how much they miss the sights, sounds, and smells that they are losing to gentrification.

All of these yearnings for there and then  seem to be based on some idealized notion that things were “better” in a different place and time.2 To some degree, they are right. Once upon a time they were part of a homogenous group living in a place where life was (mostly) predictable and, for the most part, people felt comfortable. 

Like anyone who claims to miss the good old days, they are sure things were so much better then. 

Are they remembering the way it  really was or are they idealizing it and deluding themselves? 

Is it merely nostalgia or are they struggling to cope with what must be an enormous loss—the loss of one’s childhood home, or the loss of a long-gone way of life, or perhaps the loss of the people who were part of their lives back there?

Letting Go

What I have tried to show in this short reflection is that those who keep such a tight grasp on the past are missing whatever joy they might get from living in the present. 

Romanticizing life in the old country, or in the past in this country, is an exercise in futility. Let the past be the past. 

Remember the good things and cherish your heritage, but embrace the world we live in now. After all, it’s the only one we’ve got.

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1  I used to think the Yiddish song “Rumania, Rumania'' [Music & lyrics by Aaron Lebedeff (1873–1960)] was nostalgic, but I have been told that it is actually a biting satire implying how awful things were there for the Jews.

2 A lot depends on your definition of “better.” For those with wealth and power, the good old days were probably great. For the majority, especially those who chose to emigrate to America, not so much. In fact, all the evidence, regardless of where ones ancestors came from, says that, in the days before people understood sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition, life was terrible. Infant and child mortality before the advent of modern medicine was unbelievably high. Epidemics and pandemics wiped out entire villages and families. The wars and revolutions that swept across Europe, Asia, and Africa were devastating. Millions of people were enslaved or were serfs—tied to the land and unable to marry, move, sell property, or even change jobs without permission. Famine and starvation followed wars.