'I’m Still Alive; the Gods May Be Confused'

I don’t remember old people complaining about being old when I was a kid. It might have been joked about in passing but I recall little indulgence in self-pity. My maternal step-grandfather was a joker who loved his beer and, after retiring as a house painter, volunteered as a school crossing guard. He was one of the funniest people I knew when growing up. He was not a blood relative but we called him Uncle Kelly. When he talked about serving in the Army during World War I, he recalled having a turnip fight with other doughboys in some French field. The same went for my mother’s mother. In 1962, at age seventy-four, she suffered a stroke that left her left side paralyzed. She lived with us for several months. No complaining. She was a gentle soul, rare in my family. 

Now it’s common to hear my contemporaries, men and women, bitch about having reached their seventies. At the same time they want to extend their longevity, seemingly forever. I sense a generational shift toward self- centeredness, less acceptance of aging and its accompanying losses and gains. Catharine Savage Brosman was born in 1934 and is still writing. Last year in the Alabama Literary Review she published “The Body’s Past Its Prime”

 

“My youth was orderly, and I was green,

reserved, and bent on cultivating mind—

thank God; my figure, habits all were lean,

my appetites appropriate, refined.

 

“Time was abundant. One did not misspend

it, though; for ‘recreation,’ there were rules,

for play and married love, the proper end

of girlhood. Those ignoring them were fools.

 

“I’m still alive; the gods may be confused.

Or I. And now I’m squandering my old age—

these added years a favor, but unused,

my superannuated charms offstage,

 

“while there’s no need for prudence; no one cares

or notices; all conduct is the same,

all preferences; no one says affairs

or trysts. One’s liver is, perhaps, to blame

 

“for caution; any other pretext, trite.

Today, though, someone texts me from Saigon.

(He worked there once.) He’s thinking of me. Might

he come to see me? As in antiphon,

 

“I answered, ‘Yes! Of course!’ My old heart raced.

Conditions set, however; I can’t yield

too much. His company won’t go to waste;

yet I am wary. Let’s define the field.

 

“The body’s past its prime, eyes faulty, skin

discolored, muscles slack. No shorts, sarong;

no negligee for hours of yang and yin,

sweet commerce, book talk. It cannot last long.”

 

The tone is wistful, not complaining. There’s sadness, yes. Some things we’ll never recover, but that has always been the case. “I’m still alive; the gods may be confused.”