E is for Elder

Elder is a stage of life, the last stage before death. This period of life sits in the North East of the Medicine Wheel as we are born / reborn in the East. In Native American culture, Elders were venerated and respected. They were looked after and valued. They remained a part of their families and their experience and wisdom was a treasure for their community.

I look around and I don't see so much of this in the community I live in. I don't see much of it in my life either. Well I guess, as much as I hate saying it, my parents and their friends are passing into Elder territory and I very much respect and like them.... But the generation before....

Both my Grandfathers died before I was born and I would love to have known both of them very much. Neither one of my Grandmothers has been a strong role model for good. G was a difficult lady, at least for family, non-family did not see that side so much. She caused a great deal of heartache and difficulty and she was definately a trouble maker. At her funeral we were asked to spend a moment in a good memory of being with her. I was horrified to realise I could not find one memory that made me happy, one that was not tainted with the memory of how she was.

This has become easier over time and last year, G and I reached a point of forgiveness. She was at my wedding with me and I was honoured to wear the watch that her own Mother had given her for her 21st. The watch had a bad strap and needed replacing but the style of watch made it very hard to find a leather strap that could be fitted to it. My jeweller friend buys scrap gold and that week, while he had my watch and was trying to figure out what to do with it, someone brought iin a beautiful old watch which was damaged and only the strap could be saved, and it was so perfect and so beautiful.... It was my wedding gift from her...

My other Grandmother N is still alive but again she is not an easy woman, but in a completely different way. Where G lived on our doorstep and meddled in our day to day life, N is distant, in more ways than one. N was distant as a Mother too and I don't think life was always easy for my Mother, particularly after the divorce when her Father had to move away for work and her new Step-Father was not as easy man.

I think N lives in the past, it is as if her Wheel got stuck at some point and there she is, reliving and dreaming of the times before it all went wrong, when she was beautiful and desired by affluent and influential men, before she allowed herself to be trapped into marriage with a poor journalist... It is as if she has slowly being emptying and returning, shrinking in on herself.

She does not still live in the town she raised her family in, instead, before I was born, her and her husband moved to an obscure village, really out of the way and a very long way from all of her family. She lives in the middle of nowhere and relies on friends to take her shopping and the like, she will never move.

I guess there was a part of me that resented that, that she made herself so difficult to look after. Researching my family tree has helped me understand though. She has gone back to happy days in her childhood, staying in a house a short walk away from where she now lives, with her Grandparents.

So neither of my Elders was / is a strong model of wisdom that has been easy to respect and love. But there have been others who were. One of my cousins and his wife (somehow I never realised how old they were and never thought of them as Elders). A man from the village I knew through church as a child. F's Dad.

But the truth is, Elders are not integrated in our communities. And we do not seek to grow in wisdom throughout our lives. Sometimes our Elders do not work towards family and not happy people. It can be hard to respect Elders in our society.

This has the unfortunate consequence that we do not value becoming old ourselves. All around society makes it very clear how much age is a negative attribute. Arlene Philips was removed from the judging panel of Strictly Come Dancing and replaced by a younger lady who lacked the depth of experience completely. So often older people are not respected for their unique contribution.

We also do not allow them to live with the rhythms of their life, we expect them to work as hard as younger people. In the recent strikes by Unison (Teachers, Medical staff etc) workers, one comment made by Nurses as to why they could not possibly increase the retirement age was that it becomes much harder to work shifts as you get older.... A guy nearing retirement who I work with never slows down and is always ill as a result....

Some people though, find the beauty in ageing. I myself can feel myself becoming more rooted and happier as I get older. I am getting things figured out for myself. I don't care about the wrinkles that are appearing and grey hair doesn't bother me - I had some before I started dying my hair outrageous colours ( a sign of being more comfortable in my own skin).

In order for our communities to function well, we need to respect ageing as a process and the good it can bring and we need to respect our Elders and bring them back into our communities. Maybe the truth is, we fear our Elders because they remind us of death and death is the ultimate fear of our society....