As Evelyn Couch said to Ninny Threadgoode in Fannie Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, "I'm too young to be old and too old to be young. I just don't fit anywhere." No one really tells us how we're supposed to age, how much fighting against it and how much acceptance of it is the right balance.
No one tells us how we're supposed to feel when the body grows softer and the hair grayer, how we're supposed to consider the craping of the skin or the wrinkles on the face that make our smiles feel unfortunate. Poet Dylan Thomas told us we should "rage, rage against the dying of the light," that "old age should burn and rave at close of day." He died, sadly, before turning 40.
I remember a call, a few years ago, from a longtime friend who said it looked as if her father was about to pass away. I remember meeting her, along with another friend, at her father's elder care facility and seeing the way her tears fell on his face as she stroked his cheeks and cooed his name, the way she collapsed in the hallway on our way out, not knowing if that night would be his last. He survived, and has survived several near-death experiences since, but I saw my friend's struggle with her father's health difficulties as a precursor to what might one day be my struggle with my parents' aging and health challenges.
And it was. Soon after that harrowing night , my mother, who lives alone, suff ered a stroke. Luckily, one of my brothers was having breakfast with her that morning and, .