Marking time

Bucket list for the last 20 years

I remember turning 64 and thinking, “This isn’t so bad.” Many Boomers have marked time by that refrain in the Beatles song: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64.”

The whole song is a sweet invitation from a codger to a widow, asking to make memories together in late, late life. ”When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now” he croons…

Arriving at 64 for us was somehow proof we were beating the actuarial odds. I sailed right through 64 like sailing through 1984 and still having a democracy. (Orwell, it seems, might have been off by 40 years)

We measure our lives by markers from songs and books and essential numbers.

Turning 10 and no longer a little kid. Turning 13 and being a teenager. Sweet 16, 18 (drinking age). 21 (draft age back then), 30 and why aren’t you married yet?, 40 why aren’t you successful yet?, 50 what did you miss?, 60 is this it? But 70? 80? Outliving the pull date of parents and grandparents?

Twenty years ago, a woman my age asked me what I plan to do about being in my 80s (deep old age). She presented me with a photo of a woman with wispy white hair and a sagging wrinkled face. She was in a chair, with a lap robe, presumably unable to walk. It was as if a ghost, like Scrooge’s, had visited my bedside with a vision of where I was headed.

No way. Not me. That bedside vision shaped some choices in the last 20 years. I saved for that 80-year-old who would be alive in this body. I made memories and friends for her. I dove deep into my psyche and adventured out into the world for her. Not solely for her, but I was given a specter of where I was headed and didn’t want to get there, at least not by 80. Maybe when I’m 90. No, maybe when I’m 100.

The crone in me

In 6 months I’ll hit that marker. I spent my 60s and 70s in the Queen archetype, as in maiden, mother, queen and crone. Face it, Vicki, 80-100 is deep old age. Who do I want to be as a crone?

One of my mentors, Hazel Henderson, reached 89. She was more of a truth teller than ever. She had a vast reputation as an iconoclastic, self-taught economist, and she let loose in her 80s. At conferences and meetings, and on webinars she gave every investment and sustainability professional a talking to, free of any ties to reputation or argument. Right before she lay down to do the business of dying, she gave Ralph Nader one last interview because he, like me, was heartbroken and wanted to capture her wisdom.

Emilia Rathbun, founder of Creative Initiative and Beyond War, was 98 when she died of a stroke. She was a marvel, utterly herself and imperious (to the dismay of some of her followers). I adored her (of course, I didn’t have to live or work with her). I didn’t sit at her feet, my knees refused, but in a chair beside her with a tape recorder to catch her wisdom, which has guided my thought ever since.

Who do I want to be now?

I’ve been more myself in the last 25 years than ever before. Maybe in the next phase, 80-100, I will be less myself than ever before - and more universal.

That picture of a frail woman in a chair at 80 inspired me to do all my heart desired while I still had mind, mobility and appetite. I can’t think of much I didn’t include in those years, including travel, projects, deep dives into soul work, learning, dancing, new interests, surprises, sex, friendship, even projects that made a bit of a difference. OK, so I had cataract surgery, two hip replacements along the way, but those were necessary episodes of aging, not features.

I’ve faced myself, and especially the shadows cast by my big personality. I’ve restored relationships and untangled the Gordian Knot of my past to such a degree that the main antagonists in the movies of my past now seem to simply be humans doing the best they could, given everything. My past is more like a landscape I’ve traversed than a drama I’ve lived.

I bring this peace into my 80s. Now what’s on the menu, and how much can I steer towards specific goals or desires?

Crone bucket list

That’s a joke, but not really. Willfulness doesn’t seem very crone-like, but envisioning, with kindness, this much older self is wise.

The word honor comes to mind.

To live into your 70s is a gift, but to live to 100 is a marvel. The one shining out through those eyes is, essentially, the one who opened her eyes 100 years earlier, only with a lot of twists and turns, adventures and misadventures, good choices and bad along the way. The same person. I imagine the string on which I’ve strung my years extending another 2 decades. Same string, but longer.

The word fragility also come to mind.

I can imagine that life in my skin will feel more difficult, and my skin itself papery and blotched. Any shred of vanity will only make that harder. One gift I can give is zero imposition on my flesh that vanity demands.

The word presence comes to mind

The habits of engagement with the world of politics and social issues might persist. The habit of caring. But I want to give myself full permission to retreat from the hurly burly and live in the exquisite now. In the now, you only die once. Distracted you die daily to the fact of living. I know I have lived the outer life to the fullest, so I want to practice presence more and more.

Robert deRopp’s book, The Master Game, came into my hands in my early psychedelic days when we reached for the rarified, for liberation from the skin encapsulated ego. I didn’t have enough life under me to surrender the ego - we now called that spiritual bypassing. I needed to master the world of form and process. So it’s time to return to the mystical, much of this tangle behind me and a no need to repeat myself. Not retreating into a cave, sinking into presence, letting life speak to me, and staying with the conversation.

This is one of deRopp’s practices I remember: enter the silence as often as possible. stay there as long as possible.

This seems an excellent gift to give myself in these years until I am 100.

The word body come to mind

My body is my address in this world. I have taken health and strength for granted, even with all the surgeries and challenges, I’ve always assumed I would bounce back, and even bounce forward. Now my house is very dated, and I know I’ll need to attend to the plumbing, electricals, siding, flooring, appliances more.

The word elder comes to mind

It’s time to recognize that this is already true. Several times just in the last week I’ve been invited places or been visited by people who see me as an elder. Eldering is, to me, a beautiful allowing. The more I live in the present, the more I accept both honor and fragility, I can be in that role in these times, as needed.

This feels like enough for today. Honor. Fragility. Body. Elder. And now I think gift, what a gift to be given so much life, to be able to witness this sliver of the human journey, from World War ll to the rise and fall of the Middle Class to the tech revolution that sends my voice around the world, and others voices to me, to breaching, no matter how hard we tried to stop it, so many natural and social limits that unravelling is normal and we have autocrats everywhere to take advantage of the rot.

Joanna Macy, one of my wonderful wise elders, said in my interview with her (paraphrase), “What a magnificent time to be alive, to participate in this great turning.”

Afterwards
William Stafford

Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have
been different, sure, and it's too bad, but look--
things happen like that, and you did what you could."
You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow.
There's that long bend in the river on the way
home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating
through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where
trees reach out from their deep dark roots.

Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows
till they learn that floating, that immensity
waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust.
Maybe somebody has to explore what happens
when one of us wanders over near the edge
and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn.