1. Passports, or Prescriptions
I am writing this in a blue notebook I often carry with me while waiting for my wife Faith. This time it is a visit to the doctor’s office. She will soon be 84. I will be 90 in a few weeks.
I’m parked on a street across from Dr. Sylvia Eymar’s offices, which are on the second floor. On my car radio is Daniel Barenboim, a man I greatly admire for his talent and life choices, playing a Chopin Nocturne. When I arrived, a very old couple was outside apparently waiting to be picked up. They are still there and it has begun to rain. Fortunately the woman has an umbrella.
I sit, I listen, I watch, I make notes. Another very old woman comes slowly down the stairs, one careful step at a time. I understand her caution completely; falling would be a disaster. Then another woman comes along and begins ascending just as cautiously. Shortly after, a man with a cane arrives and begins his slow, deliberate climb. Then a car pulls up, a young woman helps an elderly man out of the car, takes a walker out of the trunk and escorts him to the elevator. Was she his granddaughter? I hope so. Still no one has picked up the waiting couple and I worry for them.
That is when it strikes me all at once that I am in a different place: I am in the Land of the Very Old.
This is not a view of the Land of the Very Old. It is simply the area of France where Sam and his family live.
This was all happening in Gap, a town in the French Alps of about 45,000 inhabitants. But it could have been in almost any town or city in the so-called developed world. People are said to be living longer these days so there are more of us, the Very Old, than there have ever been before. And in France more of us go to the doctor because health care, from birth to death, is believed to be a human right and a function of good governance, so the costs for patients are relatively reasonable.
On my car radio, Barenboim’s virtuosity is completely in the service of Chopin’s melancholy and I now allow myself to worry about Faith’s excessive fatigue and wonder what the doctor would prescribe. But my concern is diverted by a young woman who drives up in a rush, kisses the waiting couple, helps them into the car, and drives off. I continue my wait and begin to notice that almost everyone descending from the doctors’ office, especially the Very Old, hold prescriptions in their hands. The paper represents their hope that those medications will ease their pain and perhaps even prolong their lives. I smile as I imagine those papers are passports to a safer and more distant country.
Daniel Barenboim–all of 82 years old, by the way–is revealing the sweetness in Chopin’s melancholy when Faith finally comes down those steps slowly, one at a time, passport in hand. We have been married almost 60 years and I want more time together.
Is that greedy of me?
2. The Old Country, or The Good Old Days
Before I tell you where I have come to, let me tell you where I have come from.
Back in New York when I was in my mid-70s, I belonged to a group of a dozen or so old men, friends since our college days, who met at Foley’s, a now-closed but much-beloved sports bar on 33rd Street, just across from the Empire State building, every couple of months to share fellowship, a good meal, libation, and some common lies. We called ourselves “The Grandpas.”
All of us were former athletes at a relatively high level. I remember walking into the darkness of the pub from the bright street and trying to move as steadily and youthfully as possible as I approached the table of old men. How comical that must have appeared.
After a round of hugs and a display of grandchildren’s photos and recent vacation spots, the conversation inevitably turned to matters of health, more specifically what a departed friend called “the organ recital.” Heart and lung problems, joint replacement, prostate reports, and cancer treatments were common motifs. Through it all, we remained in good spirits because we were still alive to enjoy one another, though it was understood by everyone present that this could not possibly remain the case. As a result, the conversation was about races run, goals scored, trophies won; it was lore repeated at successive meetings as though for the first time. Always stories of youth, success, tales of the good old days.
But the lives we were living at the time were being dismissed, conveniently overlooked. An awful lot of energy was being expended on not trying to become exactly who we had become—men who were entering Very Old.
I was more interested in who we were now, in what we had become and how we were dealing with it, as opposed to some inflated, nostalgic version of who we once had been. So I mostly listened to the glory-days storytelling rather than participating in it. I did enjoy the fellowship, though, as well as the rare occasion to drink some Guinness.
Admittedly, back in those New York “Grandpa” days, I was extremely judgmental and often unfair in those judgments. It is important to know about that period that, even though I could be considered old, I was making television documentaries full time for PBS, so my perspective then was of someone still exhibiting “productivity,” still living some pretty “good old days.” Most of the other Grandpas were retired but also doing interesting things, with animals, writing, travel, charity, yet when we came together, it was always the past, youth and the comfort it gave them, that dominated our conversations.
I continued on as a “Grandpa” until I was almost 80 and our family decided to move to France. It was also the time when the first of the “Grandpas” died.
3. Weighing Your Baggage Part I, or The Corrections Page
I do the Times crossword each morning (the Very Old do lots of little tests and checks of this manner, more on that in a bit) but before I do, I take a quick look at the obituaries. I tell myself it’s to get a look at the ages that prominent people are living to these days, but it’s really to see who I’ve managed to outlive today, if I’m being honest.
Recently I skipped over the name, MARTIN WILLENS and noticed the age, 89, same as mine. “A Project Manager on the Apollo 17 Space Mission.” I glanced at the text. He went to Andrew Jackson High School in Queens, N.Y. My school. It was the first name that threw me. No one called him “Martin.” He was “Marty” Willens, the kid I hated in school, the kid who beat me out in everything ever since grade school, who won every spelling bee and math competition, got the lead roles in every play, who dated the only girl I cared about in eighth grade.
At Andrew Jackson High we both went out for the same position on the basketball team. All the kids knew I was the better player but the coach picked Marty because as he told me, “Marty is more settled, more coachable,” whatever that meant. I hated Marty Willens daily for two full years until my family moved to a different neighborhood. He had been in my very-old-age thoughts recently. I had even thought of looking him up and writing to him. Now he was dead. Too late. No surprise he became a big deal in the space program.
Good newspapers like The Times, Le Monde, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal all run “Corrections” pages. They know full well that it is often too late to change the misperceptions created by their errors and misstatements, but since they are committed to factual accuracy as a basis for truth, they still want to show their good faith and professional commitment. So as I always look at the Times obits, I always look at the corrections.
I was stunned a few days ago to see the MARTIN WILLENS obit corrected. The deceased was actually a MARTIN WALLENS, 89, indeed a Project Manager on the Apollo 17 Mission, but he had gone to Andrew Johnson High School in Bergen, N.J. A simple case of mistaken identity on the internet.
So Marty Willens may still be alive. Last night I remembered what he looked like when we were 14 and there in bed, a very old man of almost 90, I felt again the raging jealousy of a teenager with acne. A very specific memory came to me:
“Samuel, your word is ‘fatigue.’”
“Fatigue. F-A-T-I-Q-U-E. Fatigue.”
‘’That is incorrect, Samuel. Sit down.’’
“Martin, can you spell ‘fatigue.’?”
“F-A-T-I-G-U-E.”
“That is correct.”
If the track of our lives were short, if we remained so active and absorbed that we couldn’t get a steady look at our path to very old age, how in the world would we know what we have been, how we have been, maybe even why we have been?
I believe that only from this distant place can you observe things you’d never have distinguished from up close, things that would be a blur in the swirl of an active life. From this safe distance you can see not merely behavior but patterns over a lifetime that reveal more than an occasional misstep or a poor choice.
I am not daydreaming in my armchair; I am watching myself from a distance and noting my behavior with some objectivity. Just before I drop off to sleep each night, I conjure distant memories that begin to fit the pattern of who I have been. Even my dreams have begun to provide episodes from an almost forgotten past.
Fairly early in the process of assembling my own corrections page, I discovered a tendency that had caused me to make some terrible decisions in my life: I was too much of an ideologue politically, socially, and culturally and too harsh in my judgments. I lost some close friendships as a result and can’t possibly retrieve them. I tended stubbornly to put what I believed ahead of the human realities of most situations.
In retrospect, I can say I was wrong fairly often. The old joke about the French scientist who looked at an Englishman’s practical solution to a problem and said grudgingly, “Yes, but does it work in theory” applies. Fortunately, there still may be some life left to me in which to correct some of my most glaring errors.
Professionally speaking, I remained teaching at the university a year too long; I was a burnt-out teacher that final year. And while making some very good documentaries, I regret that I allowed myself to be talked out of too many very good ideas.
Then there’s also my tendency to anger too quickly, to exaggerate achievements and its opposite, the exasperating fault of false modesty. I realize also that I have talked too much and too often in my life and as a result am not very interesting to myself these days. And I’ve interrupted others too often and embarrassed myself at other times with outrageous statements. I’ve also lied on too many occasions, small things always but that makes the tendency even more troubling. This confessional list is partial. In time I’ll recognize other faults, but I’ve begun to make progress on correcting the unpleasant tendencies I’ve discovered because of the critical examination a very long life makes possible. The process will end only when I do.
But all in all, warts and all, I believe I’ve lived an honest life, didn’t intentionally damage anyone, made the necessary sacrifices, did good work, and enjoyed myself.
Of course one could live in the Land of the Very Old and opt to do none of this stuff. That would be a mistake. It doesn’t cost a penny and in some strange way visiting your truer self in this land makes you feel younger. I’m not sure I’d feel so good about the grade I give myself had I discovered more about me to dislike. But even then I believe there would have been the necessity to make my remaining time meaningful with discovery and corrections.
4. Weighing Your Baggage Part II, or The Spice
I have a good French friend who is not merely old, but is a very reliable bilingual critic. When he read this essay, his response was lukewarm, but because he was indeed a good critic he suggested how it could be improved. Spice it up a bit, he wrote. Give some specific examples of how recollection leads to understanding. My problem then was how many examples and which ones. I’ve decided on just these two. I hope they’re spicy enough.
The first is an example of a realization that’s been dormant but because it wasn’t connected to other realizations remained unseen and unrealized, or more accurately out of focus. Make sure you pack your microscope if you travel to this Land of the Very Old.
The incomparable novelist Carlos Fuentes makes a distinction between memory and recollection that I had never considered before: Memory is a vast, dark pool you allow yourself to tumble into; recollection is more like a card catalog in an old-time library. I went to my card catalog trying to find the best example of an experience from the past that altered or redirected me in a significant way, and found this in my memory pool:
I received a phone call from the editor of TV Guide in July of 1984 to interview the British actor Richard Burton. Burton was making “Ellis Island,” a made-for-television movie—a step down for a star of his magnitude. Kate Burton, his daughter from his first marriage, was launching her acting career and was featured in the film. Burton’s presence would add to its importance, bring publicity, and allow him back into his daughter’s life after his turbulent years with Elizabeth Taylor.
I did not admire Richard Burton. I knew of his brilliant beginnings as a stage actor when he was welcomed as the second coming of Laurence Olivier. And I saw that brilliance for myself when he was Jimmy Porter in the iconic English film Look Back in Anger. Then Hollywood discovered Burton and vice versa. Money. Glamor. More money, more glamor. Elizabeth Taylor. Publicity, bottomless publicity. Lousy roles, lousy acting. I didn’t believe Burton had the right to waste a talent as rare as his.
I took the assignment.
When I arrived on the set, a castle near Swindon, I was told that Burton was not available for an interview. We arranged one for the following day. Again it was canceled; I was told Mr. Burton was slightly ill. The next afternoon lawn chairs were set up on the lawn behind the castle. A vast forest was spread against the sky. The sun was descending. Richard Burton, wearing a robe, appeared; we shook hands and took to the lawn chairs, lying down facing the forest. He looked withered and seemed to be in quite a bit of pain– it struck me that this man wasn’t merely ill. Richard Burton was dying.
I remembered then from my research that he had been a close friend of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, whose poem “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” was one of the few I had committed to memory. So we talked about Thomas and Wales and their friendship. The subject relaxed Burton and he smiled as he began to recite the poem: “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light….” And Richard Burton’s remarkable voice, full of energy now, carried that poem across the lawn and up and over the forest. Then, unasked, he began to recite it in Welsh. Then, after a silent time, we talked not about movies or career or fame but about our lives.
I had done my research and knew that he had been born in a small Welsh mining town, the 12th of 13 children, that his mother died shortly afterward, that his older brothers, all miners, vowed to keep him from the mines. I knew that he had been adopted by a teacher named Burton, who saw to his education and that Richard eventually was accepted to Oxford, where he began his promising career on the stage. So I had what I needed for a conventional TV Guide article.
When I got back to France and wrote my piece, I could not avoid the fact that Richard Burton was a man who did not have long to live, and I suggested as much at the end of the article. He died a week after it was published.
Now all these years later, in recalling the interview, I have come to realize how incredibly judgmental I had been. The young actor’s talent was his talent to do with as he wished. Richard Burton owed me nothing. Who was I to judge him?
Then there was a far more personal discovery: You can rage against that “dying of the light” all you want, as I thought I would when I was influenced by Thomas’s poem. It is an almost comic bluster to think our lives are that significant.
A second spicy example of old-age research and discovery was understanding why, and how, I married Faith Potter.
I called her for a blind date on October 6, 1966, a Thursday, and discovered that her apartment was walking distance from mine in Manhattan. She invited me over. We both were English teachers. We talked well into the night about teaching and poetry and politics and personal histories and agreed to have dinner at a restaurant the following Tuesday. The conversation was more of the same but more detailed and deeper. The following Thursday another dinner date, more conversation at my apartment, where we made love. At evening’s end, we eloped to be married in Elkton, Maryland. We’d known each other for exactly one week, been with each other for perhaps 15 hours.
It had been a very long and, by Shakespearian standards, a “marriage of true minds.” Yes, Faith was beautiful, strong, sensitive and compassionate; she was someone I could spend a lifetime with, but why did I rush into marriage so quickly? In the Land of the Very Old these are the kinds of questions you ask yourself at two o’clock in the morning. You also have the distance and perspective to find answers that never would have occurred to you earlier.
Mine came this way: I was lying in bed taking stock of myself—as is my want often these days because my corrections page requires it. I usually spend too much time on “flaws,” but this night a counter voice whispered, “What about virtues?” That’s when I realized that I believed one of them was the ability to recognize excellence. I could tell true talent from faux in a great many areas—in the arts, in sports, in politics, in people, in life. It was an ability I had come to possess with a high degree of accuracy.
Before that realization I never connected that belief with my haste in marrying Faith Potter. She was undoubtedly an “original.” I had seen too many copies to be fooled.
5. Crossing The Border, or The Diminishing
Aging is not merely an accumulation of years; it is also a passage through various stages of growth. It’s a movement from one land into another–adolescence follows childhood, or as middle age presents some of us with midlife crises very different from any earlier passage. Each stage puts us in a different landscape, and I can now attest that being Very Old is qualitatively different from being just plain old.
Like adolescence, it ought to have its own designation. It doesn’t, I think, because it is a twilight time and there is so little that’s good about it, so little to look forward to.
Adulthood, usually a desirable period, follows adolescence, but retirement and the likelihood of becoming unproductive and ill awaits those who cross the border into the Land of the Very Old. No, not much to look forward to in that. Some propagandists have dubbed it “The Golden Age,” but that generally has been shrugged off as a bad joke. I recall telling Faith a few days after my 80th birthday when I lost my balance putting on my pants, “Eighty is different.” If I had to give this stage, this exile, a name, I’d call it “The Diminishing.”
This might seem a simplification to those who are not Very Old, but I knew I had crossed the border when I decided to go under the sink one morning to fix a leak. Addressing the leak was easy enough, standing up again was not. No one was home. I had to use all my strength and have a plan to first get to my knees and then hold on to the cupboard to rise.
I must have looked ridiculous, so now I use the inability to stand up with a degree of grace as a simple test of Very Old citizenship. The wise among us know this and are reluctant ever to get on the ground. As a result, reluctance and caution become necessary qualities of mind and character and begin to reshape the essential personality of the Very Old. Overly cautious people become different people. Easy movement becomes a shuffle, clothes fit differently, pants tend to hang loose, the second sleeve of a jacket disappears behind you.
I won’t go into detail, but simple bodily functions require more attention and at times engender fear of creating embarrassing public situations. Should I even address flatulence? No, I’d better not. The possible indignity of those moments and other diminished capacities, such as driving, make Very Old people reluctant to travel great distances, so we tend to confine ourselves to smaller and smaller living spaces, making the physical and mental diminishing of our lives even greater. Vision and hearing decline as well. Teeth will be a problem. Sometimes I have my voice, sometimes I don’t. The forgetfulness of the old will become the dementia of the Very Old, tiredness becomes fatigue, weakness frailty, caution fear. Indignity, thy name is Elderly.
No, this land of the Very Old is not a very pleasant place to be in or even to read about, but if you have followed me this far into very old age, you might as well follow me the rest of the way. Because I remain an optimist, my journey has a surprising destination.
I won’t go into much detail about my own “organ recital” because it’s pretty standard stuff—a touch of cancer, dizzy spells, and balance problems, a gimpy leg, hernias, back pains, et al. So approaching my 90th year I am in relatively good health. Not as strong as last year, or as flexible, or as mentally adept, but I am thankfully without excessive physical pain or emotional depression. My experience in this land may not represent the suffering of some others, but it is representative enough to give what I write truth and value.
In this diminished Land of the Very Old most of my energy goes to fighting off greater diminishment. As I said, I do the Times crossword most mornings to prove to myself that I’m not that diminished. It is among the brave and admirable little evaluations, tactics that we develop to encourage ourselves about our futures.
And although I do the puzzle in a reasonable amount of time, instead of immediately knowing the word from the clue, I have to tell myself I know I know that word…and often it comes, but a while later. My habitual forgetfulness when I was merely old has become in this country short-term memory loss. I also know that it will never reverse itself. It is only an annoyance. But annoyances pile up and become concerns.
I tell myself repeatedly even in the dark confines of “The Diminishing” that there has to be a way to understand this state of affairs that can still find the means to satisfy the human spirit, my human spirit. I’ve tried mightily to discover what can be enriching about being Very Old. To the American cultural psyche, consolation means that you’ve already lost and gotten a “consolation prize.” And living in the Land of the Very Old is generally a losing proposition. After all, to get there, you must be diminishing.
Nevertheless, here are a few of my consolation prizes in random order: Writing, forests, reading, the sun, music, animals, family, mountains. Not bad, eh?
I read books now for the second and third times and understand them at this age very differently from ever before—more truly, I think. This experience is deeply satisfying. I have invented a writing project that will take me to the end and may not remain unfinished, since I’ve written the final chapter already. The project makes continuous demands on my imagination and keeps me guessing. I listen to and understand music as I never have before, thanks to the instruction of virtuoso and jazz philosopher Wynton Marsalis. The various young animals we have need me on occasion: If you are needed by a pet, you can’t be irrelevant. We are three generations living in one large house—Faith, our daughter Olivia, and her son Asher.
They constitute, as you will see, the heart of the paradox that has helped me understand why “The Diminishing” exists and what it really means in our lives.
6. Making a Home in a New Land, or The Paradox
At about the time I was approaching “the diminishing” border, I left the daily commute to PBS in Manhattan, eased out, as is proper and necessary, by younger and cheaper documentary makers. Every worker knows that one day the elevator doors will part and the Inevitable pushes the down button. Faith, who had been an excellent high school teacher, loved her profession and retired long after the required age. And Olivia, with a young son, was the head of a public library in a Queens neighborhood that despised books. Spontaneously we all considered moving to a summer house we had built in the French Alps. The vote was swift and unanimous.
We had spent a year in this rural village—Saint Bonnet-en-Champsaur—when Olivia was three, and we were struck by its good weather, surrounding beauty, and welcoming people. We bought a plot of land before we left. The family spent almost three decades of summers finishing the house and enjoying the life, but to make it livable all year round for the four of us required extensive and costly modernization, expansion and winterizing. Moving there permanently required us to sell everything we owned. Obviously we are an adventurous lot.
Our house is about two kilometers beyond the village and sits like an aerie high above the road to town. When we arrived as permanent residents, I was almost 80 but in reasonable shape. I did not know then that there was a difference between being old and becoming Very Old, did not really consider the effects of the declining years in the decade ahead.
In truth, even if I had known how much I would decline, I’d have proceeded anyway: ignorance is a necessary condition for an adventure and often essential to its success.
Some of the things that make Sam’s life pleasant in the Land of the Very Old. Loved ones (human and animal), a comfortable home, and a beautiful setting.
After our furniture finally arrived from New York and we began to settle in, the great concern was mostly a matter of getting Asher comfortable in school and acclimated to a new language and new friends. They came to him naturally. So we simply began the familiar routine that is the rhythm of family life. The house is on three levels and is so large that we can stay easily out of each other’s way, but since we all like one another well enough that’s rarely a problem. I guess we can be considered one of Tolstoy’s “happy families” that do not make for very interesting novels.
As is generally the case, “The Diminishing” came gradually, but in some ways surprisingly swiftly, for me. We have two acres of steep, heavily landscaped property that I prided myself on maintaining over the years. In our third year here, Faith hired a young man to do the heavy work of weeding, pruning, replanting, moving large rocks. I rebelled, threw a fit actually, and put on a great display of wounded pride.
By the fourth year I was silently grateful. In year five I could actually admit it had been a fine idea.
Similarly, I had been able to fix almost anything that went wrong in the house; after all, I had built much of it myself. Faith no longer waited for me to be the handyman; she called in repairmen immediately. Again, I managed to be outwardly miffed, inwardly grateful.
My great pleasure living amidst very high Alps has always been mountain walks with friends. A backpack with provisions, a path through the woods, walking stick tapping ahead, brief stops and conversations, then getting above the tree line and looking at the world from the peak. Those are all fond memories now. I played basketball with Asher and his friends until two years ago when I discovered I couldn’t reach the basket from the free-throw line—a mere 15 feet. I did Tai Chi on the balcony in the morning sunshine until last year when a loss of balance brought me to my knees. Last year even swimming became too uncertain.
Because we live in the seasons, winter has been the best time to measure my decline with exactitude. The entire house is heated by a centrally placed wood-burning stove and the firewood has to be carried up from the woodpile on the ground floor. There are 14 steps. When we arrived permanently, I could easily carry up nine pieces of firewood, often without using the banister. This year it’s five and I pull myself along, counting every step as I rise.
Ignorance is a necessary condition for an adventure and often essential to its success.
Indeed, I have declined in all the usual ways that befall–perfect word in this context–the Very Old. Let me mention another, one that is less debilitating and far more subtle: Looking at yourself in the mirror and appreciating the person there.
I’ve never been one to look at myself unless I have to, and these days I do so even less. The person I see there now is a stark reminder of who the world actually sees. But doing this literal self-reflection is essential to my understanding of how to live well in the Land of the Very Old. The Very Old person looking back holds the key to whatever happiness remains.
And fortunately, I like the flawed, very old man I see in the mirror now, so I intend to pursue self-discovery until the very end because it is the source of my present well-being.
Here is the paradox simply told: Even while I am moving deeper into very old age, recognizing and recording my own diminishing as time passes, my truth is that this last decade has been the happiest of my entire life.
If that is not a mind-blowing paradox, I don’t know what is.
(Please forgive me. No writer worth his computer would be satisfied with the word “happy” to describe the complex emotions that lead to the contentment I feel much of the time.)
I might be in the kitchen making breakfast, sun streaming in, and I will feel a sudden, palpable sense of well-being in my chest that requires me to share the feeling with anyone I can find. Or, I will be talking to and petting Coda the poodle, and my joy is suddenly so great for no apparent reason that I squeeze him much too strongly. Or, at night in the dark in my armchair, a page of the book in my lap illuminated, I sit back and take a deep breath because I am thrilled by a passage in Malraux or Fuentes.
Truth, as Keats said, is beauty, but it is also contentment. Hence my sunshine breakfasts and poodle-squeezings, my spontaneous outbreaks of joy—of well-being, of—yes, I’ll say it—happiness.
All photos courtesy of Sam Toperoff. This story was made possible by the support of Sunday Long Read subscribers and publishing partner Ruth Ann Harnisch. Edited by Peter Bailey-Wells. Designed by Anagha Srikanth.
Sam Toperoff
Sam Toperoff loves his mortality. He lives with his wife, daughter and grandson on a hillside in the French Alps in a chalet much of which he built himself. He has published thirteen books, hundreds of magazine articles, and produced dozens of documentaries for PBS, one of which won an Emmy. This essay is an excerpt of a longer work that he hopes to see published in the US.
