'Stowed Out of Conscience'

Reading Auden sparked a memory. The poem is “Old People’s Home,” written in 1970 and included in Epistle for a Godson (1972), the last collection published during his lifetime. The premise is a familiar one and probably inevitable, given our demographics – visiting what I grew up calling “an old folks’ home” and today is known as “assisted living,” among other euphemisms. He goes to see an aging friend who remains lucid and able to care for herself, unlike “the terminally incompetent, as improvident, / unspeakable, impeccable as the plants / they parody.” Fifty years ago, the scene was new to Auden: “their generation / is the first to fade like this, not at home but assigned / to a numbered frequent ward, stowed out of conscience / as unpopular luggage.” As he rides home on the subway, he turns thoughtful and then a rather shocking thought occurs to him, as it might to us:

“Am I cold to wish for a speedy

painless dormition, pray, as I know she prays,

that God or Nature will abrupt her earthly function?”

  

My first thoughts were literary, a short story by Richard G. Stern, Updike’s first novel – both set in old folks’ homes. Then another thought showed up, one suffused with literature but rooted in life – and happier. As reporter I was assigned to interview the residents of a Jewish retirement home in Albany, N.Y., across the street from Washington Park. This was almost thirty years ago and most were recent arrivals from the former Soviet Union.

Fifteen or twenty men and women, several in wheelchairs, sat in a meeting room. I heard a mingling of Russian, Yiddish and English. Language and suspiciousness about a guy asking a lot of questions limited conversation. I was about ready to leave when I asked if anyone read the Russian classics. Most said yes and trotted out the canonical names – Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov. I asked, “How about Babel?” and I heard murmurs and sighs and observed nodding heads and smiles. “How about Mandelstam?” The buzz grew louder. Old ladies squeezed my hands and some of them cried.