the deepening ground

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

Jaques, from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

Time. Shakespeare notes the Seven Ages of Man. Others refer to the four seasons of life. My mother-in-law simply says, “DON’T turn 84!” There’s a part of me that cringes every time she repeats this imperative. For an eighty-four-year-old woman, she’s in great health, still driving, still taking long walks around town, and still managing her own finances. I hope to be as healthy and sharp when I reach my eighties.

But there’s another part of me that grieves.

I want her to rise up with Tennyson’s Ulysses and boldly declare:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Instead, she repeatedly asks me the same innocent questions each day about the weather, what we’re having for dinner, and what’s going on in the evening or the coming weekend. Come eight o’clock, she’ll announce her bedtime routine: first cup of tea, go upstairs to read, second cup of tea, three trips up and down the stairs, and then one last trip up to brush her teeth and read herself to sleep.

Perhaps I’m clinging to the past when I should be gradually releasing her into the natural stripping away (as Elizabeth Goudge calls it – see the quote from The White Witch) until what remains is humility, dependence, and trust. I certainly don’t want to crush or spoil that beautiful transformation. And so I’m learning to be gracious, praying for the fruit of the Spirit to manifest more fully in my life, especially the fruits of patience, gentleness, and love.

And perhaps her own poetic prayer penned in the late 1960s offers a reminder that I need, a fresh perspective on aging and how “the rains” it seemingly brings can draw us closer to one another and to God himself.

I love Thee tonight, my dearest Lord,
As the rain comes down like a piercing sword.

So with my life the rains must come down,
But I thank Thee dear Lord, for I never shall drown.

And after the rain, earth’s refreshingly new,
So it is with me, for I’m closer to you.

~ “I Love Thee” by Bonnie (Timmerman) Stitt

So I close with one of my favorite poems on aging: Seamus Heaney’s “Follower.” For me, it is a celebration of what was that provides the corrective lens to my nearsighted tendencies, fixated on the present. The “nuisance” of old age ceases to exist when I stop to reverence the whole life lived.

Due to copyright issues, I cannot post it here, but you can use the link below to read the complete poem on The Poetry Foundation’s website.

Follower
by Seamus Heaney