Aged in America

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Brad Wallace

On a recent trip up the street, I saw something that made me feel a little bit better about the inevitability of getting old and loosing my teeth.

Two men, frail and ancient, playing gin rummy on their porch. One had an oxygen tank, and the other's hands were shaking with every draw from the deck. I listened to their conversation, laughter and cries of "bullshit." They were old, probably born in the '20s, and their fate was to end up slapping cards around in a shady district of Tucson.

Yet, they were happy.

By direct contrast, one of my grandfathers died in a nursing home when I was a child. One of the most disturbing memories I have is visiting that place, narrow halls and weeping people, the smell of urine.

My grandfather died deep in dementia, thinking that he was the King of Hawaii, surrounded by those who didn't care, or were too busy to provide adequate care due to their overwhelming patient load.

It seems like that's what awaits us.

Nothing is more horrible these days than growing old. Judging from the mass media, we seem to reach the peak of human worth about age 25, right when our disposable income peaks. If you are old, you are not beautiful, you are not productive, and society seems to suggest that it would be better if you just went... away.

Of course, now that the all-important Baby Boomers are aging, we can expect to see this change, as they wield the sword of upper-middle class buying power.

Nonetheless, from advertisements for Viagra and St. John's Wort targeted at the aging, it seems obvious that the emphasis in the future will not be increasing quality of life for the elderly, but striving vainly to delay the inevitable. Modern day hucksters sell a cornucopia of herbal and Eastern cures, all promising to take years away and add spring to the step.

I have no doubt that some of those Boomers are going to look absolutely fabulous until the day their heart explodes. You can buy all the gingko biloba you can eat, but to treat aging as a "disease" with a possible cure simply degrades the human experience.

People age. We die. The fact that America is so horribly repulsed by all matters regarding death has created a horrible netherworld to which we are all doomed.

Unless your family is very wealthy or unusually selfless, entering late life is a ticket to isolation and misery. Nobody wants one of those old folks pissing in the house, right? What would the neighbors think?

My pipe-dream solution would involve profound cultural changes.

Imagine an America at ease with mortality, accepting the arc of human life at both ends, instead of just the young "looks good in vinyl" end of the spectrum.

If such a basic change could occur, it seems that all of the needed medical and economic reforms would follow. Happy, meaningful years would be at the end of our lives, and the elderly wouldn't be shunned into gated communities where the normal folk won't have to see them.

It won't happen.

There is however, a sort of wonder that emerges when I consider those two guys out playing cards at sunset. I'm sure that they don't see it as courageous to bitch and moan with each other, or to laugh hysterically by themselves at some shared joke. But I do.

They could be defeated, scratching days of their calendars until they die, but instead, they live like men, and probably play a wicked-ass game of Gin.

I hope that when it's me in their shoes, I'll have enough guts to laugh.

Brad Wallace is a creative writing and molecular and cellular biology senior. His column, Handful of Dust, appears every Tuesday and he can be reached via e-mail at Brad.Wallace@wildcat.arizona.edu.