The moment you realise you are entering your ageing years is confronting, especially if you still feel young. Might that burst of anxiety be a door into a different kind of old age?
y mum was due to celebrate a century of life and looking forward to getting her card from the Queen. She’d been living in an aged-care facility which had been through multiple lockdowns due to Covid. Our family started preparations for her birthday party; “hold the date” cards were sent.
As Prof Ken Hillman says in his book A Good Life to the End, “no matter how much we tinker with the natural ageing and dying process, biology will eventually win … nothing stops the ageing process”. A few weeks after Mum’s funeral, I quietly celebrated my own significant birthday. Not long after that, I was woken up by the feeling of something or someone shaking me. It was about 3 am. The house was silent except for my pounding heart. I’d been thinking about Mum’s last morning and how I’d counted her breaths before realising she had drawn her last. Then a voice in my head started.
The first thing I learned is that, like me, many people experience the mortality alarm in their 50s and 60s. It’s not always triggered by the death of a parent. Sometimes it’s set off by a life-threatening diagnosis or the death or near-death of a close friend, relative or spouse. Others have FOGO but haven’t articulated it.
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