Aging: Looking at the celebration of age and a deeper meaning of life

Mention aging and the conversation can veer down two distinct paths – one of losses (poor or ailing health, financial concerns, uncertainty of role after retirement, decline of a peer group, family far away, moving from a cherished home) or one of gains (growth of the extended family, grandchildren, time for relaxation and leisure, financial gains). Each of these is a valid topic but, for this month’s bulletin, I’d like to focus briefly on the idea of aging as a celebration and as a means to finding deeper and greater meaning in our lives.

Rabbi B. Allison Bergman, Temple Beth-El, San Antonio, Texas, reminds us of an early role model for aging well. “Sarah, our matriarch, lived until she was 127. Sarah had a child at 90! … . Our Bible teaches us a vibrant story about a woman living her life to her fullest, well into her old age. In fact, the simple listing of her age conveys a lesson; every word of Torah teaches us something. That Torah revealed her age may indicate to us that we can, and should, embrace the length of our days. Judaism teaches that one should continue to learn and grow – no matter what age.”

Important reflections in the aging process include on how we have succeeded or failed, what we have achieved, how we have lived and what we still hope and plan to achieve. As we age, we inevitably lose loved ones and come face-to-face with our own death and mortality.

This self-knowledge can lead to a deeper experience of living, to a more significant sense of connectedness with others, to a felt need to embrace religion or spiritual practice.

Unlike our earlier years, which were punctuated by ritual that emphasized getting older (finishing one grade and beginning another, making a varsity team, bar/bat mitzvah, high school and then college graduation, marriage, having children), aging has few rituals that mark the importance of growing older and some of the tasks at hand. Ritualwell (ritualwell.org) is an online source for contemporary Jewish ritual, with hundreds of ritual celebrations suggested for life’s milestones. Its site says, “One of the central tasks of old age is remembering. Remembering means piecing and knitting together the pieces of one’s life; it means honoring and integrating one’s history. It means recalling the past for oneself and passing it on to the next generation.” This passing-on is central to our emotional well-being; it is a means to connecting to the past, present and future, to feeling our achievements and struggles have been witnessed and heard, to feeling that our lives have impact.

As I thought about this topic, Marilyn Zuckerman’s poem, “After Sixty,” caught my attention.

“The sixth decade is coming to an end.

Doors have opened and shut.

The great distractions are over –

passion, children, the long indenture of marriage.

I fold them into a chest I will not take with me when I go.

Everyone says the world is flat and finite on the other side of sixty.

That I will fall clear off the edge into darkness, that no one will hear from me again –or want to.

But I am ready for the knife slicing into the future, for the quiet that explodes inside, to join forces with the strong old woman,

to give everything away and begin again.

Now there is time to tell the story,

time to invent the new one,

to chain myself to a fence outside the missile base,

to throw my body before a truck loaded with phallic images,

to write, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” on the hull of a Trident submarine,

to pour my own blood on the walls of the Pentagon,

to walk a thousand miles with a begging bowl in my hand.

There are places on this planet

where women past the menopause

put on tribal robes,

smoke pipes of wisdom.

fly.”

Though in the later years our children have left home, we often continue as caregivers for our aging parents – but also it is a time when we have time and energy again for our own goals and aspirations – and now we have the wisdom of our age to guide and inform us. We gain strength from being active and celebratory, whether individually or as part of a community.

NICOLE JELLINEK LICSW, is a social worker and coordinator of the Kesher program at Jewish Family Service.