Age Changes Perspective-
Sort Of
As August dawns, I usually spend a few days thinking about getting older. Thursday is my birthday. I'll have more to say on Thursday, but the topic came up this evening as my wife and I were talking. She started by commenting about the ad on TV for the DVD of the TV series, Victory at Sea. She said that she used to use part of that when she was teaching. I paused and said, "Back then it was recent events. Do you realize that when you were teaching, it was less than 25 years after the end of the war?"

Then I reflected for myself. "You know, whenever I see a car with a Vietnam Veteran license plate, I am still surprised when the person driving is an older person."

In my head a Vietnam Veteran is a person in their early to mid 20s, not someone 50-something, balding or gray-haired. Hey, in my head that also describes me since I am of that era. It is a standard of human life, I think, that we keep this image of ourselves (and our generation) as being some magic younger age. That is for me one of the great mysteries of getting older- but it explains a lot about people I have known over the years.

We do refuse to accept the changes that are happening within and around us with our own lives because we really don't see them. In our mind's eye we are still able to do whatever we want to do. Don't confuse me with facts. You don't understand. I'm fine. So when it comes time to sell that house and "downsize" or accept the fact that your child is now an adult- and probably older than you think you are- it becomes a major battle.

We become afraid that once we give in to aging it will take over and we will immediately become invalids. It's behind the unfortunate promise extracted from children: "Promise me you will never put me in a nursing home." The child accepts when the answer should be, "No, I can't promise that because I may not be able to do what you need me to do to take care of you."

Yet my generation is facing that issue in the most painful ways. Our parents are getting older. They have lived longer than their parents generation and have been generally in better health for longer. They, like we will be in another 25 - 30 years, are not able to put it all together into the reality we face. Family feuds and disagreements will grow. At times it may even look like the 60 all over again as neither generation really has ever come to understand the other.

I pray that I will be able to remember this when I have to sit down with my father-in-law. I pray that I will remember that just as I still expect Vietnam vets to be in their 20s, he and his generation expect the Korean or WW II vets to be that age. It is all in perspective and in how we manage to guard and keep each others dignity.