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Writer's pictureRose Levinson, Ph.D

Chronicles of an Elder

Updated: Aug 2



I’m old now. I didn’t take that in until my latest February birthday. Reaching it, I’m three years older than my mother who died at eighty. It’s startling to find myself in territory she was not around to explore. I grope my way around in my newly acknowledged elderhood, looking for anchors that make sense, before there are no more anchors, no more journeys,


Endless articles tell me what a healthy old age looks like, what I should do to enjoy it, to feel positive. Of course I read them. Sometimes I snort with contempt. I’m not going to take up power gliding to prove a point. Other times, I think maybe it is important to up my intake of chickpeas. On good days, the thought of death keeps its distance. On bad days, mortality hovers around me like a nimbus, wisps of fear encircling my body. It’s mostly a quiet fear, though sometimes I erupt into panic, trying to mentally outrun the images. What will happen and how will ‘it’ happen; will it be me first or my partner; how will I/he cope? I try to limit the time I give these thoughts; some days are better than others.


A mirroring of my adolescence revisits me in elderhood. Now as then, things are in flux. Lots of unanswerable questions. The younger me kept searching for meaning and direction. The old me does that too, still impatient at how incomprehensible things are. There is no whole to be discovered. Only random fragments lie about which I occasionally assemble into coherence.


Often I feel I’m failing to ‘do old’ properly. Shouldn’t I be a wise old woman, cheerfully dispensing advice to generations below me as I pass around homemade chocolate chip biscuits? Alas, I’m too ill-tempered to measure out the ingredients, too full of rage to focus on the oven. All my life, I’ve waged battle with my temperament, all that Vilnius/Kiev-persecuted-Jew DNA knotted in my interior.


As I’ve aged, I’m more fully convinced we’re born with indelible patterns, ways of being which we can challenge but never fully overcome. For me, the DNA I inherited holds depression and anxiety. I think part of it comes from those times when Jews were slaughtered or conscripted into the Czar’s army, precarious lives subject to random death. Second generation American that I am, those ghetto fears shouldn't still be there. But they are. My genetic test indicated I’m 98% Ashkenazi Jew and 2% Neanderthal. These days, the Neanderthal is the upbeat part of my inheritance.


Curiosity is one of the main engines that keeps me going. That and a strong desire to be seen, acknowledged. Having no biological children, I tussle continually with the knowledge I’ll leave behind no genetic traces. That’s a hard one, though I have no regrets at being childless. I have mothered without giving birth.


So let me continue to be curious, though afraid. Creative, though depressed. Giving, though withheld. Thoughtful, though confused. And all manner of things shall be clear, if only for a brief moment..


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