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| Growing old is somewhat different than how it is protrayed by today's marketers. |
Those same marketers avoid any mention of deteriorating health and sell those sunset years as the best of your life, and for some they may be, but for many I have known, they were quite different.
Life was loaded with all the expected highs and lows, but beyond that the journey to old age looked satisfyingly predictable only to be overwhelmed by ill-health and a disorder that left the marketers’ promises in disarray.
An advertisement painting a cheerful and glowing picture of life in a retirement village peopled by an endlessly smiling and obviously healthy cast had just ended when I learned that an older extended family member had died.
He had never been among that “cast” as beyond a short spell in a retirement home, he had lived alone with his dog after the death of his wife from Alzheimer’s disease several years before that.
My father-in-law, a war veteran, in his late-eighties and a truly honourable gentleman, his missed completely the claimed joy of the sunset years as for years he was pre-occupied caring for his wife before she died with Alzheimer’s and now his health is such that the care he was once so generous with is being equally devoted to him.
He had a brief interlude of happiness when he married again, but deteriorating health is seeing that bliss evaporate, and subsequently his sunset years have been, and are, quite unlike that the marketers promote.
This troubling dichotomy between what our sunset years really are and what’s marketed, promised, and expected, seems to be a product of the baby boomer ”me” generation that was born and raised, and now aged, in the years of plenty, leaving them with unattainable and unsustainable expectations.
Primed by a paradigm that has always promised, and delivered, more, the boomers, being archetypical consumers, look to maintain their hold on life’s largesse and so, without much thought, expect continuation of the comforts they have long enjoyed.
Living on death’s doorstep will be, beyond a few exceptions, challenging because of deteriorating health and the compounding difficulties brought on by age, and worsened in every sense by exhaustion of our finite world and the complexities of a burgeoning population.
Ageing, however, does bring an increase in wisdom, mostly, and, again mostly, an expanded understanding and application of patience, qualities that will be at a premium as we negotiate contradictions between promises and reality.
