HELPING IN THE WISDOM YEARS [W, 3-12-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man--HELPING IN THE WISDOM YEARS [W, 3-12-25]

 

In thinking back through my years, to come to “final integrity” instead of “despair,” what Erik Erikson said is the task of old age, it has been useful to divide my life into four score [20 year periods].

The first score I call “the learning years.” That’s fairly obvious. The second score is “the adult years,” getting established in family and job. Third is “the mature years,” when we share what we have built up, and fourth is “the grand years,” which for me mainly means grandchildren, but can also be grand because we have more time for our own interests.

 Since I am into my fifth score, even beyond the “four score and seven” of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Helen asked me what I am going to name these years from 80 to 100. I didn’t have any ideas, so she suggested “the wisdom years.”

I like that. I hope it is true. But I recall that Augustine said that the so-called innocence of children is more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart. I have always felt the parallel of that in old age is that the so-called wisdom of age is more a matter of decline of brain than clarity of vision.

We often express perceived wisdom in the form of questions. “Have you winterized your car yet? It’s almost August.” [Old people also like to leave the house early, so if you want us to arrive at 5:30, tell us that supper is at 6.]

In her later years, we became friends with Mary McDermott Shideler, the theologian. She read an article I wrote for “The Christian Century,” and responded to it. We struck up a correspondence friendship, and later when I was speaking at a cancer conference in Denver, we got to drive up the mountain to her home near Boulder. Well, we didn’t do the driving. Cancer friend and mentor Lynn Ringer did the driving, since she lived there and knew how to drive the mountains.

The four of us had a great afternoon, playing with the Great Pyrenees dogs for which Mary was a rehab rescuer, and talking theology and mystery books, and telling stories.

One of Mary’s stories was about a little boy who was born without arms. One day when he was about two, a friend was visiting his mother. The little boy was trying so hard to put on a t-shirt. Can you imagine trying to put on a t-shirt without arms? He struggled and struggled, without success. Finally, the friend said to his mother, in exasperation, “Why don’t you help him?” With tears in her eyes, the mother replied, “I AM helping him.”

She knew that she would not always be there to help, that he had to learn to live without arms in an armed world, and that he had to do that for himself.

Old people, in our wisdom years, need to remember that often we help those who are younger not by helping but just by being there as they learn.

John Robert McFarland