The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old by Sophy Burnham instant download

The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old by Sophy Burnham instant download

you turned to me, appealing.

“I’m 59,” you said with a haunted look. “In a few months I’ll be 60.” Then

ducking your head shyly, “What’s it like to be—”

You stopped. But I knew what you were too tactful to ask. What’s it like to

be Old?

“I’m afraid,” you whispered.

Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be afraid? You move now to the stage of

“crone” and “hag.” Fear is mostly what we hear about aging—fear of

wrinkles; fear of loss; fear of diminishment; fear of humiliation and of being

unwanted, abandoned; fear of the inexorable decline into chronic pain and

death; fear of finding ourselves like King Lear, crying naked on the cliffs

against the raging storm. It’s fear exacerbated by a $48.4 billion beauty

business pushing 18-year-old airbrushed skin as our ideal.

Who wouldn’t be afraid?

I remember as I turned 60 asking my Aunt Kate that same question.

“What’s it like in your 60s?”

She answered with a toss of her chin, visible even over the phone line:

“Oh, Sophy, you won’t even notice your 60s. Now at 90,” she had murmured

thoughtfully, “you begin to slow down.”

She died at 103. That’s forty more years along.