How should we live when we’re old?

This is a very real issue for me, but NOT in any way a problem.  Towards the end of my eighty third year, I feel able to maintain my attitudes, which include a readiness to change my opinions if the facts change around me.  At my age, the changes due to wear and tear are obvious.  The worst of these is not the aftermath of cancer, or the onset of arthritic problems, but the loss of speed in accessing memory, which results in not remembering the names of people I know perfectly well, among other irritations.  However, one devises ways of working around these difficulties which work well enough.

It might come as a surprise to some readers that the most important and powerful influence in my life is, as it has been for many decades, the love of women, and in particular women with whom I share a high degreee of affection.  Sexual intercourse opportunities may decrease in a linear way with time, but there has been no diminution of my libido, or in the strength of my desires.  While this may seem a formula for frustration and even despair, I have hardly been touched by these disabilities.  I exchange both words and actions of love every single day with the women of my choice, and it is largely due to these that I am able to maintain a high morale and the incentive and motivation to work to care for those dear to me who need my help, in whatever form.

Because of these, and of course of my own nature, which I have helped build in the way I want to be for most of my life, I am able to sing and even whistle favourite tunes every day (though it seems that nobody whistles nowadays, whereas in my childhood in the 1930s most people seemed to do so).  I’m no singer, and was often told that as a child, but I sing because I’m cheerful and happy, even when things are going wrong.  It’s a helluva lot better than whinging and moaning about one’s problems!

Now I’m not saying that I have a magic formula for ageing successfully.  That depends on one’s genes as well as circumstances outside one’s control.  But what I do works well for me, and it may give you, dear reader, some ideas about how to continue happily well past 60, an age which to me seems pretty young, now.

For me, the importance of love in my life, then and now, is paramount.  It’s a great foundation for growing old disgracefully, if that’s what you fancy!

Love and age

Love and age battle in my body, but in my mind love is the clear victor.  Too bad that in my body it seems that while the war is far from lost, the latest battle seems to have been less than a victory.

In my ninth decade my libido is active as ever; the bodies of pretty women stir me and excite me as always, but it’s just about all in the mind.

You young people have this to look forward to, that love, which as young men we treated very lightly and often turned casually away from, becomes much more precious.  Athough its value becomes very high as we age, its availability diminishes, especially if we have not taken care to nurture and encourage it despite all the difficulties and problems.  To be left in old age with no love is the worst kind of death sentence, and a victim of such circumstances might well begin to long for death to end the pain.

A woman in my bed

Just a thought that came to me this morning.  And as my libido is not gone, I live in hope of developments…

 

It seems so natural to have a woman in my bed.

For fifty years I’ve slept with women,

wives and mistresses, but all that may have ended.

Making my bed today, I realised a year had passed

since last a woman slept with me.

Is this the latest victory of death,

or just another step in growing old?

© MM 31.1.2012