Friendship in the Golden Years: Laughter, Loss, and Life

A while back, I lost a good friend. Someone who shared her soul with me. We grew old together. I marked the creases that split her full lips and she noticed the gummy changes in my mouth. We talked a lot, looking at each other’s faces and expressions and noticing the sudden appearance of aging spots and drooping eyelids. We said things like, “old age ain’t for sissies,” and “isn’t it awful!” and I asked her to tell me if I was sprouting long black hairs on my chin.

Now that she’s gone, who will be my mirror? Sure, I’ve got other friends, but if your friends are like mine, they’ll be reticent to say, “Er… maybe you didn’t notice the stain on your sweater.” Know what I mean?

So, I’ve been thinking about our friendships in old age. Do our friendships change as we grow through life’s stages? Do we need our friends for the same purposes at different stages of life, such as childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood, and beyond?  It seems that our needs do change over time.

Young children play ‘next to’ more than ‘with’ others. It takes some maturity to relate to another as a person with rights, needs, and feelings. It is not easy to discover that one is not the center of the world. As a teenager, I remember agonizing about whether I was part of the ‘in’ group, whatever that may have meant, and wanting to be accepted by the popular kids. I could spend hours on the phone gabbing away about some guy or blubbering because someone passed a horrible remark. Friends were receptacles for ventilation, reassurance, and defining our place in the group.

Now I’m old. I like to move around less and am not looking for high-tension adventures. If I travel, I want it to be in an organized group. I enjoy lectures and concerts and chatting about important things. I compare the real conversations I have with my friends with the silly clichéd conversations of older people in movies.  The people who write these dialogues, don’t know my friends!

We talk about our grand and great-grandchildren and their accomplishments (or lack of them!) We tell ourselves to be more tolerant of each other’s declining functioning, both physical and mental. I mix with people who can’t remember my name and ask me where I come from after nearly three years. Some can’t hear and others chatter away because they don’t realize that the topic of conversation has changed. And some say, “Have I told this to you before?” and then repeat the same old stories.

But all is not serious.  My friends and I laugh a lot. We laugh at ourselves and at one another. Bev says she locked herself out of her flat and couldn’t find the key, which was in her possession the whole time.  Jim says, “Don’t ask me whether I enjoyed yesterday’s lecture.  I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast!” Joan confesses that she dives for the toilet as soon as she gets home.  Liz says she calls it the ‘bathroom’. Liz counters, “I say tomaytos and you say tomahtos”.  Sometimes the conversation touches a sore place, and we giggle nervously. Talking about our failing bodies affords some catharsis for our frustrations and fears.

These days I think about loss and dying. I have lost too many good friends because of illness, mobility issues, dementia, or death.  I think about this and need to talk about it.  The pity is that we live in a death-denying culture that prefers us to think cheerful thoughts. I don’t want to let the side down. I don’t want to be a dampener, so I, too, exchange platitudes. If my friends really knew what was going on in my mind, I wonder, would I have any?

My sister worries about being able to make new friends. “Most people are well established in their circles. They’re not looking for new friends.” Actually, I think she’s wrong.  Our social circle is constantly shrinking. Perhaps it's more true to say that as we age, we widen our parameters and look for new friends who enjoy the same activities! We have to do so, if we are not to be lonely.

We need a sense of continuity throughout the stages of our lives. And when an old friend passes on, we lose access to the composite picture she carries of us over the years and in different situations. Telling one another anecdotes about the past helps reinforce our sense that our lives didn’t begin only the week before, and we didn’t always talk like this or look like this.  I was a teacher, an engineer, a beautician, a mathematician, a doctor, and I want to be known as such. I was a daughter, a mother, a wife, a divorcee, etc.  At the same time, we don’t want to just re-live the past, and new friends afford opportunities to redefine ourselves and explore new personas.  Perhaps I am an artist, or good at bridge, or I can sing!  “I love drama,” says one friend, “because I can be just the opposite of the reserved person I’ve always been.” There’s a cheerful defiance in the wonderful poem by Jenny Joseph, who says, “When I grow old I will wear purple, with a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.”

Today, we know that it is not only by keeping our bodies and minds fit and healthy that we live longer and age gracefully.  We are social beings who need friends. While it is painful and sad to lose lifetime relationships, we are driven to invest in new people again and again. Friendships in old age are, of course, different because we are different.  But in many ways, they are just the same.  So, be friendly, be nice. You never know who may become your new best friend.