Now, truth be told, there is a lot of exaggeration involved
when Walt does the "old man walk," but it's not all exaggeration.
There's the slumped shoulders, the protruding hips, the foot shuffle, the
bowed head. It's hard to figure out what is real and what is for
effect. (He does, though still have his own teeth and all his own
still-mostly-brown hair, unlike this illustration.)
I understand that. I do my own version of the old man
walk when I'm here alone. When I'm out in public, I stand more erect
(or as erect as I can get with this sloping back) and try to step out as
briskly as I can (realizing that my idea of a "brisk walk," which often
leaves me winded, is someone else's idea of a shuffle!)
But when I'm home alone, I find that it's easy and more
comfortable to settle into the old man shuffle as I walk from one end of the
house to the other.
The "old man walk" is not necessarily a function of age.
Heck, I walk that way far more than my mother, except on days when her back
is really bothering her.
The days...the years...pass by so quickly the older you get
and it's hard to realize that you have passed into "old age." Even
Jeri, at 50, is past "middle age" unless she plans to live to hunnert, as
others I know do.
We don't realize that we can't do everything we did even 20 years
ago. At the memorial service on Sunday, after the formal service, they
cleared away the chairs to make room for dancing. Here is Walt, 76
years old, in a group of people he does not know, most of them significantly
younger than he is, starting to pick up and carry chairs. Force of
habit from all those years helping out after Lawsuit concerts and theatrical
events! I told him he was old and could let the younger people handle
the heavy lifting!
It always makes me nervous when he's out climbing a ladder
somewhere, remembering that he has fallen once, and he was more
"bounce-able" then!
Sometimes you are brought up short by comments that make you
realize...hey....the 70s are starting to get old. I listened to
some guy on the radio the other day talking about a video called "Elders react to Beoncé - Lemonade." You may find it amusing.
The thing that got me, though, was the conversation between
these two commentators, laughing hysterically at the reactions of the people
in the film and talking about how hilarious it was. One of them
thought calling the people "elders" was insulting and asked "can't we find
something more polite to call people over 65? OVER 65???????
I remember many years ago when I was 65. I was "elderly" then,
apparently. Now I would think I have one foot in the grave, if I
didn't have a nearly 97 year old mother more sprightly than I am.
It's all so relative. Yesterday there was a woman who
probably had been sitting with my mother until I took her seat (I didn't
realize she had been sitting there). She had collected leaves and
wanted to be sure that we knew she had picked them up off the ground and
didn't steal them. She was hard of hearing and kept saying that she
couldn't be expected to hear right because she was 93. I didn't bother
to try to tell her my mother, whose hearing is just fine, is 97. Her
dementia was quite a bit worse than my mother's.
Then this morning there was a guy outside The Today Show
with his family, having the time of his life in New York City...at 102!
How I long to see the sparkle in his eyes back in my mother's again.
She was always so lively, so involved, so interested and excited
about everything.
I don't think of myself as an old lady yet -- unless it's
convenient to be one (to get a seat on the bus, for example!) but I realize
that by the standards of most people around me, at 73, I am probably on my
last legs. I just pray that when I reach my 90s, I am with it
enough to still enjoy life, to find excitement in things around me, and to
enjoy Bri and Lacie's children. I hope I still remember everyone's
name, even f I do walk the old lady walk.
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