The Desolation of Old Age

“How desolate are those hours in which a person feels that the tree of his life is being stripped of its green leaves...
Old age... this killing desolation... this heavy, pitch-black night...!!
Why is it heavy and desolate??
How can you make your old age beautiful, serene, and glad??”

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From a letter sent by a lady in the lands of exile to her daughter: “Today I am like a tree stripped bare by autumn, left standing alone to face the storms, with no life in her but a remnant of sap running in her veins... And on the day winter is routed and the buds of almond and apricot break open, youth will return to the naked tree, and life will come again, stirring in every one of her branches. But as for me, each further day of mine brings me nearer to an autumn more barren and darker still... That is why I have called you: come to me and do not leave me far away — or else send me one of your children to keep my desolation company; for life is heavy, and I see no further need of it.”

This is what that lady wrote to her daughter, in one of the hours of her pitch-dark night, when she felt bleak desolation crouching upon her breast. She counted over her loved ones, and those whose memory stirred in her mind... and found herself far from them all. It weighed heavily upon her, so she came claiming them, and insisting, giving voice to the fear and anxiety trembling in her heart... And what should she have to fear, this lady whose living is assured, whose life is comfortable and happy?!

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Old age — that cold stretch at the far end of life, when the blood of youth no longer pulses with vigor and warmth, and life is no longer what it was... A broken old man, whom life has wrestled and who has wrestled life; he has known her laughter and her weeping, her happiness and her misery, her good and her evil; and here he stands now upon her brink, his feet trembling beneath him, and in his bearing all the meanings of defeat and collapse... emptiness within emptiness... Is there, then, no way to help this old man? How shall we fill the emptiness in his life and enrich his days and his nights with pleasure and companionship? How shall we bring spring back to the autumn of his life, and blossom and fruit to his naked tree?!

One searching glance cast at the face of an old man or an old woman tells us a thousand tales of this thing they call “desolation”: it is in his eyes, straying off toward what lies beyond the visible; it is in the knotted knot joining his brows; it is in the deep wrinkles the years have carved at the corners of his mouth and around his eyes; and it is in the question mark drawn upon his face in a thousand meanings and one!

Yes, we feel that a sensitive social problem surrounds us and lives with us, yet we do not put ourselves to the trouble of thinking out a solution for it... We attach great importance to our own old age, because we want it serene, its calm unruffled by a gust of wind; but I do not see that we have so far met with any success. That is because our study and our grasp of this delicate season of our life are still limited, and our treatment of these matters is still a surface treatment, driven by sentiment alone — and sentiment by itself is not enough, for it is blind.

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Each one of us, on the day he goes out into the world, builds for his future and his latter days. His aim before all else is to secure the material side; and most often he neglects the side of the spirit — and it is from there that desolation seeps into the horizon of his life. For what is desolation but a hunger of the spirit? If we do not arm ourselves against it, it pounces upon us and overruns us with its black wings and its powerful talons! And what is our armor but those friendships rich in their spiritual worth — a friend near to our soul, who shares our feelings and our memories, and dives with us to the depths of those memories in the distances of the remote past?

A true and constant friend, laid up for the cold days of old age, is what best drives away desolation and weariness, and brings gladness and cheer to the heart of the aged man. That is why the old cling to their friends, take care to keep them, and grieve to lose them.

A horse or a dog that accompanies its master and lives with him into his last years becomes dear to his heart, a companion for his weariness and his desolation...

And the ancient oak at the edge of the village is a treasure beloved to the hearts of its old folk; for as it spreads its boughs into space, it seems to open its arms to enfold them in its love and its tenderness. And besides this, it seems to know more of their doings and their stories than any human being! And the emigrants in far-off regions — what a mighty longing burns in their anguished hearts for those ancient trees that witnessed the battles of their childhood and the escapades of their boyhood and their youth, with all the splendor and heroism and crushing defeat those battles and escapades held... They carry for them a yearning and a homesickness such as they carry neither for their kin nor for their soil...

Nor do I mean to belittle the worth of the book by having left it unmentioned until now. And what is there like the book? It is the genial friend, the keeper of the covenant, on the day friends fall away or scatter. Reading — heavy and light, in every color and on every subject — is among the most potent means of driving away desolation and banishing weariness. So whenever you feel the fingers of desolation begin to tease your eyelids, standing between you and restful sleep, take to reading, for it is the healing remedy; and do not forget that you may choose from it only what pleases you to read and delights you — and then you will find that you are refreshed.

The desolation of old age is one of our delicate social problems, whose treatment we must approach with much psychological analysis, with regard for the sensitivity of the old and respect for their years, and with forbearance toward them over small, passing things. And I hold that the aged person, however keen his concern with material things, keeps the side of feeling as his first need, and that whatever touches his feelings on that side drives him toward desolation and gloom.

The remedy for this desolation, and the only road to its cure, is to lay up a store of those deep spiritual treasures — of friendships human and other than human, of a practiced habit of invigorating reading and of amusement with light occupations — in a warm family atmosphere, gladdened by the cooing of a little child, with the angels of tenderness and love hovering over it...