“As a white candle, In A Holy Place, So is the beauty, Of an aged face.” – Joseph Campbell.

I love my life, more than I ever have.

I am living a fuller life than I ever have. I am beginning to know who I am, and what my purpose is in this world. I have never written better, captured more meaningful images, thought more deeply.

But I also understand there isn’t going to be too much more of life, or at least not nearly as much as I have already lived. I admit to being cautious about writing too much about aging, I am well aware of the cultural bigotry and bias against the elderly, most people flee from the very subject of aging as if it were a poisonous toxin.

I possess this bigotry myself. I don’t want to write or read a blog just for the elderly. Why would anyone else read it? See how everyone avoids it.

So I write about it only rarely. But I do wish to write about it. We are all there or on the way, one of life’s few universal experiences. And if I am not at the edge of the Abyss, I see it down the road.

Some years ago, I became a hospice volunteer and trained one of my dogs – Izzy – to be a hospice therapy dog. Red has succeeded Izzy, we do some hospice work, some work with veterans, some with dementia patients, some with elderly residents in assisted care, as in the Mansion.

I think I became a hospice volunteer in part to consider my own mortality through the lives – and deaths – of others. Through this work, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of people, many elderly, and witnessed many at the end and edge of life, and many others who die. My dogs and I have said goodbye to so many people. Everyone’s death is different, but I have seen again and again that the best deaths, the most beautiful and comfortable and meaningful are the most considered.

The people who think about dying and accept it seem to often have the deaths they wish, those who deny it and run from it are caught unawares.

Aging is a rich and remarkable experience, it is a dynamic,exhilarating, frightening and complex process, especially in our country. I am so much happier being older than being young, that was the hardest time of m life. I was no good at it.

Until fairly recently, we could expect to die at home, with little expense, surrounded by our loved ones with our family in our own beds.  Our children and grandchildren saw death and were close to it, people were not nearly as surprised or stunned as they are today by death. Today, almost no one dies at home. Those brave First Responders get almost everyone to a hospital in time.

I know a woman whose best friend died recently, and she said the experience gave her perspective, namely that other people she knew and loved might die. How could it be that she didn’t know this? I see the same thing with dogs and their humans all the time. People are simply stunned that dogs die, and don’t live very long. Many are so shocked, they can’t bear to get another one. What, I wonder, did they think would happen?

Today people die in institutions, isolated from us, hidden out of sight. Death is a taboo subject in our media culture, unless someone is blown up or shot.

The old way of dying is rarely possible any longer, we are expected to die in homes and facilities, at enormous expense, subject to endless regulations, in the care of strangers, and often pointless medications and surgeries. We all expect to live forever, but there is little thought given to how we will be living.

I have two chronic diseases – heart and diabetes, I asked an insurance salesman – he was trying to sell me life insurance – how long an actuary expected me to live. Oh, quite a while, he said, if you take care of yourself, ten to fifteen years, although the premiums go up towards the end. Could even be longer.

Do the tables say how I might live?, I asked, sort of joking. Oh, no, he said, there are no tables for that.

I had this discussion with my cardiologist recently, he said his job was to keep me alive for as long as possible, regardless of any pain or discomfort. And if I didn’t take all of the medications, I could end up with a stroke or awful heart attack and live a long time in a way I wouldn’t want to live.

I didn’t say this out loud, but what I thought of was a good writer friend who took her life when she was 75, she simply did not care to grow old in the new American system of aging. She always planned to leave when she was healthy, and she did. That was awhile ago, and 75 strikes me as too young for me to make that kind of decision.

Maybe I won’t call 911 one day in the future, maybe I’ll walk out in a raging blizzard and go to sleep. Or stop eating. All of those are legal choices, and may be good ones for me one day. And I don’t find the idea the least bit depressing, I find it quite liberating.

When I do my therapy work, I always wonder if these are places I would want to live. I think the Mansion is the best institution Red and I have been in, the most caring, the most thoughtfully run. The residents are grateful to live there, and I have not yet met a one who would wish to leave, even as they often miss their old lives. Do I want to go there? I don’t know.

I am healthy and content, in love and engaged in meaningful work. I feel my body changing, sometimes I feel like a clenched fist in the morning, and I am working to accept the things I can do and cannot do. I continue to reject what I call “old talk,” the denigrating way in which older people are taught to speak of themselves.

“At our age. We older folks,” etc. Self-defeating and demeaning language. At our age we can achieve wonders. We can find love, paint beautiful things, write wonderful books, practice forgiveness, grasp history, learn acceptance, make friends, love animals, share the wisdom and humor of a lifetime, carry our knowledge forward, mentor others, spoil grandchildren, pass some truth along.

Many of those things are things the young do not yet know how to do. They are precious things.

At our age, I am finally learning how to live, and learning what it is to be a human being. I can even pass some of it along. And despite my chronic diseases, I am healthy and able to do just about anything I wish to do. My head has never been clearer.

Aging is not about hanging on, but accepting life. The creative act is not about hanging on to life, but yielding to a new phase of life, a new creative moment. Awe and openness are what move us forward, not lament and nostalgia.

It is, I think, only when we approach the abyss that we can begin to see and discover the treasures and power of life.