Growing Old Not So Gracefully

Being an old woman is no plum assignment, and all of the 88-year-old Betty White’s swearing on her guest spot last weekend for Saturday Night Live can’t change that.

In Maclean's, Barbara Amiel shares the challenges of growing old gracefully.

Being an old woman is no plum assignment, and all of the 88-year-old Betty White’s swearing on her guest spot last weekend for Saturday Night Live can’t change that. Men have always enjoyed better shelf lives…

There is, however, no getting around how ghastly this time is. (If you are under 60 stop reading here, should you have bothered to get here, because being young or what’s now sociologically classified as “young elderly,” you will not yet have experienced the following humiliations.) Being called “dear” by policemen and all members of the male sex who used to call you “darling”; trying not to mumble your words, one of those weird sensations like pins and needles. I open my mouth wider and wider as I ar-tic-u-late while trying to avoid looking anatine, because my mouth muscles seem to have stuck and it’s not Botox. I’ve self-diagnosed with Google’s help and decided I have a condition called dysarthria, which has to do with aging that causes “abnormal sequencing of the muscle movements required for producing speech sounds.” Everyone around you seems to be speaking at fast-forward speed. Coordination is equally bizarre. Why I am sent medicine in bottles and containers I can’t possibly open without putting them in the door jamb? And on days when you tart up and go out, the benefits are arguable.

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