A Celebration of Age

Frances Kolarek-150 wideBy Frances Kolarek —

During the last days of 2015, The New York Times devoted three full pages to a group of New Yorkers in their 80s and 90s, including pictures, brief biographies and quotes. A mind-boggling feature!

I venture to suggest that just a few years ago, three full pages about aging would have focused on its negative aspects. But the December 2015 headline reads ”The Wisdom of the Aged,” a lighthearted play on words.

While the individual stories are interesting, the full impact of so much space devoted to the aging in a positive vein denotes real progress. Remarkable progress. So many clippings I have accumulated over the years stress illness, dependency, loss of mental acuity, of mobility, loss, loss, loss.

So, rejoice, ye fellow oldsters. Things are looking up. We are no longer objects of denigration and pity.

In 1975 Bernice Neugarten, a pioneering authority on the elderly, wrote in The Times that ”a set of stereotypes has grown up that older persons are sick, poor, enfeebled, isolated and desolated.” Forty years later the tables are turned. It was Neugarten who first grouped the elderly into the ”young old” between the ages of 55–74 and the “old old,” those over 75. Today “Oldest-Old” are those 85 plus. Then there are the “Young Old,” 65–74, and the “Old” 74–84.

Fifteen years ago, when my daughter showed a book I had just written about Collington’s first 10 years to a physician interested in her family history, she wrote me: ”His jaw dropped. ‘80? Did you say your mother wrote this at 80?’” Hah! I could bore you out of your skull with lists of people in their 80s who are productive today in dozens of fields from entertainment, to athletics to science.

It is most rewarding to start the new year with good news, with hope that the news will get even better, and that age is becoming acceptable—no longer a condition that brings us to our knees in despair.

Au contraire. We appear to be edging closer to that goal of mine: To see “old” replace “young” as a word of envy, a goal to be attained. Age. Let’s celebrate it! Happy 2016.

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