ELDER VALLEY: REFLECTIONS FROM AN OLDER RESIDENT
As an undergraduate student of literature, I read “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter, a short story that influenced my decisions about retirement. The main character, Granny Weatherall, who at 80 years old is on her deathbed, recalls that “when she was sixty she had felt very old, finished, and went around making farewell trips to see her children and grandchildren, with a secret in her mind: This is the very last of your mother, children!”
Although Granny Weatherall went on to live another 20 years, the idea of feeling very old at 60—and spending 20 years in a kind of post-life state of mind—haunted me, a mature student in my mid-30s.
I would not, I told myself, consider myself as good as dead at 60.
Fast forward to today. I’m 71 and five years retired, and that lesson has influenced most of my decisions about life. One of the most compelling instructions for healthy aging is to “keep moving.” Whatever you do, we read and hear, just keep moving. And so I have kept moving.
Exploring Comox Valley walking trails with friends
I’m naturally inclined to entropy, so I have been appreciative of the cadre of friends who have encouraged and accompanied me on walks, most often in some sort of park around the Comox Valley.
The walking date starts something like this: “It looks like it might not rain this morning. Want to walk?”
“Yes, that sounds great. Where?” Seal Bay, the Airpark (if the window is small), Goose Spit, Nymph Falls, Gartley Road Beach. The precise location depends on weather, available time, and energy levels.
Sometimes the outing includes a healthy picnic lunch, and sometimes it concludes with a beer and a somewhat-less-healthy pub offering. The common factor is that we are always moving, some of us using watches to track our steps and flights of stairs, and others who ask the watch-wearers how far we’ve walked, or how high we’ve climbed.
I’m of the technology ilk, using my watch to goad me into standing up one more time, or doing another circuit of the yard at the end of the day so I can “close a ring” on my activity log.
One of the things that Granny Weatherall does while lying on her deathbed is recall the sad and tender parts of her life: an early love who jilted her, a child who died in infancy, the joys of young motherhood, the feeling of being needed by her adult children as they raised their own, the accomplishments of being a farm wife.
Walking, talking, and reflecting on life
My walks in the parks with friends also involve recalling and reflecting upon our past accomplishments and regrets, a slight dipping into the what-ifs. But mostly we talk about now, both personal and political.
While we are rooted in the joys and disappointments from our pasts, we go beyond Granny Weatherall’s morose meanderings and generally agree that our lives are not—that life itself is not—a walk in the park. But it IS interesting.
