age gracefully

As a sequel to my last entry Age is a Meaningless Number, I am celebrating my 96 birthday this year.

There’s really nothing that says I have to do them all in order. That would be boring. =D

I started working backwards from 113 … and I skip around if I feel like it.

XD

Chronological age is just a number. It means nothing unless we give it meaning.

Most people who worry about their age are actually worrying about something else. It’s highly individual and different for everyone, but it’s almost never as bad as it’s perceived by the individual themselves.

We need to figure out what it is that we’re really afraid of when we’re stressing about our age. Identify it and name it. Only then can we face it, do something about it and move forward.

We owe that to ourselves and to those we love.

I’ve had white hair since I was 9.

I’ve always had crows feet around my eyes when I smiled, even as a baby.

I routinely listen to music that is hundreds of years older than I.

I became an Aunt the moment I was conceived.

I became a Great-Aunt (which, as far as Chinese familial titles go, is a derivative of “Grandma”) at 14.

I’ve never let anything make me feel old. I’ve never let anything that shows my age bother me.

And I never will.

My husband’s maternal grandmother is 95 this year. She has to watch her blood sugar, blood pressure and can’t eat random foods without paying attention. Sometimes she has hallucinations when she’s not 100%, although I haven’t heard about that recurring recently.

She walks with a cane, but she’s still mobile and she’s in relatively good health, considering.

She doesn’t have a lot of hobbies. She refuses to play mahjong, even without money involved. She still thinks of it as gambling and therefore, the root of all evil. She cannot fathom it being a game of strategy.

At that age, most of her closest friends are gone. I can only imagine that making new friends is tough, everyone’s younger than she is and there’s almost a generation gap between her and the other seniors. She has four loving daughters, many grandchildren and lots of great-grandchildren.

But the one thing that bothers her the most is her past. She still has a lot of hurt from the way her husband’s family [mis]treated her. In a war-torn China, almost everyone in the older generations have lived through at least one World War, famine, poverty and economic depression. In those conditions, jealousy, greed, selfishness and general malice are rampant.

She still holds passionate grudges against people who are already long dead. She still stresses over money even though there’s no need to. Her financial situation is comfortable and her daughters are more than generous to her.

Her spill-over issues come into play multiple times a day with the one daughter who is her primary caretaker. It causes them both an enormous amount of unneccessary stress. She lives with her other daughters on a rotational basis as well when the primary care daughter can’t take it anymore. She takes her paranoia and negative stress with her wherever she goes. It’s really sad.

It’s made me realize that aging gracefully is not just a physical thing. Being healthy is important, but in times of diminishing mental, emotional, psychological capacity, it’s important to have hobbies and activities that make you happy. It’s also important to carry as little emotional burden as possible.

Aging gracefully, to me, means dealing with my issues as they come up and let go as soon as possible. Resolve my hurt, if not with the other person, then at least in my own heart. Be grateful it’s not worse.

Longevity was never supposed to be an ironic or miserable thing.