Now I am an Omega

            At various times in life we move to the head of the line because of personal qualifications:  “Johnnie, you are the tallest – you go first.”  “Betty, you’re good a leader – you take charge.”  “Lily, you know how to do this, so show the others.”  

               At other times, we move to the head by default. There's no one else to take on this role.  This September I will be 90 ninety years old – at the head of the Funk branch of the family  by default.  I am the oldest in the Funk clan.

               When my mother died at age nearly 99,  I realized I was now an Omega, approaching the end of the  line.  In my book Prayers of an Omega, I wrote the following to introduce the entire series of prayer-poems about transitions in aging: 

                                                     Now I am an Omega

            God, my everlasting Comforter, we buried Mom today. We laid her in the ground, next to Dad. Now I am Omega, the last in our family.  I’ve moved to the head of the line.

            Now the storms of life can beat directly upon me. No buffer. I used to think of Mother as an umbrella, holding God’s love over us like a shield. She prayed every day for each of us by name—children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She used to say that was how she remembered the names.

            Now no one covers all of us with her prayers. I stand alone to pray for my children and myself. And sometimes I forget. My umbrella is gone. And it’s cold and wet in the rain.

            Lord, I’m probably next in line to die.  The generation above me is all gone. Now I have to be strong for the generation below me. I have to be the umbrella.  For my children.  Their children.  And I don’t feel able. I’m not ready to be patient, long-suffering and, and forgiving, as Mother was.

            And I’m afraid of the darkening shadows. Of being an Omega. It was easier being an Alpha, a child, near the beginning.

            Decades ago, driving home late at night we children slumped together in the backseat of the car like four loosely packed sacks of potatoes. Though it was dark and the road was bumpy, we knew we were going to that wonderful place called home. Dad was driving, Mother was watching. We knew we were safe. We would get there.

            Mother and Dad did the best they could to raise us with what understandings of family relationships they had. And daily trusted in God’s grace. They worked out understandings with their own difficult past. And worked hard at bringing us up to become responsible human beings. And kept on praying and loving.

            Now Mother and Dad are both gone. I am an Omega, the last in a series. And I am afraid.

            Yet you, Lord, promise to carry us like a mother eagle that spreads her wings beneath the unsure eaglet testing its flying strength. You promise to bear us should we fall.

            So, Lord, spread your strong arms of love under me and around me and steady my faltering feet. Let me travel hopefully. Carry me, an Omega, by your grace. Lord, I trust you. Amen.

My coming out as a geezer-ess

It happened such a long time ago, I can’t remember the details clearly any more. 

Shortly before retiring from college teaching I got my first  “geezer” messages.  I am using geezer as meaning an old person,  not just  a male Englishman who likes drinking, football and violence. 

Several decades ago, as I paid my lunch tab, the clerk asked innocently, looking at my hair – or maybe it was my wrinkles, my slow walk, my something or other, “Shall I give you the senior discount?” 

I turned around to see who she was talking to.  There was no one behind me.  

I wanted to shriek: “I’m no eccentric old geezer of the female variety!”  I paid and walked out in a huff. 

For weeks when I passed a mirror, I glanced at the baggy, saggy woman reflected in it, sucked in my stomach, and threw back my shoulders. I could lick geezeritis. I was not just another little old lady-writer in pink Nikes stumbling down the hill.

For a time I yielded to the sinister message the entire culture was flooding me with  that this next period of life, being a geezer,  was a dead end and had no redeeming features. Its appearance, its non-activities, and its noninvolvement  with life shaped  the size of the ever smaller tunnel I was being ushered through. 

I was being told clearly, blatantly, that it was best to go gently into the dark night and carry a bottle of aspirin in one hand and hair dye in the other. Becoming old was a disaster.

Then, sometime during the day, a friend I hadn’t seen for several years, said, “Katie, you haven’t aged a bit in ten years."

Another friend said, “Katie, you look younger than your pictures.” 

I preened  my soul feathers.  The jowls under my cheeks disappeared suddenly  without liposuction. The wrinkles smoothed out around my eyes. The world was good.  I lapped up the compliments like Kansas soil during a rain after a long drought.

I was beating old age after all. 

I knew I would never be a geezer or geezer-ess or geezer-anything.  I would be forever coltishly young, kicking my heels in the meadow, with agile muscles and joints, slim tummy, smooth skin,  energy without measure.

And that’s the way it went for several years, my resisting being considered old as if it was some rank contagion to be avoided at all costs -- until I  realized who I was and who I thought society thought I should be didn’t mesh. I was  growing old. 

My coming out as a female geezer was slow, but with time I learned to accept a number of things about being old. Here are just a few of them. 

--It is not treason to look my age. Aging is not a social and personal disaster, a disease  nobody should admit having.

--Accepting aging does not mean retiring from life, only from certain aspects  of it. It does mean plunging into life in a different way.

--Aging is a stage in life, an important time of life for those in it and for younger people hopefully watching their elders navigate through this stage of life. They will model their own aging after what they have observed in parents, grandparents, and older friends. 

  

--Even though church and society may devalue its elderly, actually often  waste them by setting them aside or  encouraging them to pursue trivia, we as elders should encourage our age cohort to  pursue activities  that engage intellect and spirit.

I am convinced that in these conflicting times we need elders, especially those  who see the world steady and whole and who can offset the zeal of the young with wisdom and inner stability. We need each elder according to his or her gifts and talents. Each still has something to offer others – if they are given the opportunity despite frailties and foibles.

Final words: Do not go gently into geezer-hood.  It can be one of the most rewarding times of life.