The irony of growing old!

Life can be described in three phases. 

The first is growing-up as a youngster, the second is finding the means of survival as an adult, and third is having to live as comfortably as you can in your age of retirement.

There is a school of thought that suggests that the first sixty years of life, the system exploits your talents, working commitment and any productivity that you can offer. Then comes retirement and you may or may not have acquired savings or assets such as land or property, a wonderful family and children you may have given your all for and to.

But at this stage, a grim reality starts to become a new accepted way of life. The savings keep going down coin-by-coin, cost of living becomes unbearable and the land and all its products will have no one to continue from where you left off. Your home or houses are now in need of repairs, your cherished car you can no longer get parts for and all your cherished children seem to care only for themselves and their own family and friends.

Physically, you may no longer be able to do the things you use to and there is no new support system, especially financial-wise; and to add salt to the wound, all lending institutions close their doors on you.

Most friends, if not all, only greet you electronically. Nobody offers a lending hand or offers the service you need and there will always be a cost associated.

Today, social gatherings are so few you find more comfort and satisfaction by staying on your own, couped-up at home.

You listen to the many opportunities available to the young, but you get no invitation to participate or get involved in any capacity. All that you acquired prior, educational or otherwise, or through your skill sets, seem not to be of need anymore, as you are now considered a has-been.

As far as the rest of the country is concerned, you have lived your time and what they expect next is your exit from this earth, but hoping that whatever you leave back materially will be a plus to your beneficiaries.

The cost of caring for yourself and your health at that stage seems to be an arm and a leg. You can’t even have a selective diet or willfully do anything that you like or what pleases you, like drinking your favorite grog.

So, this is the stage when you are left to wither away, become lonesome and detached from all that is happening around you, with only electronic gadgets like the television, or cell phone, or maybe a computer, to keep you informed of what is happening on-island or elsewhere in the world. Like plants and fruits, you have been shelved only for use when necessary.

That divided line between you and the rest of the society is really the load that breaks the camel’s back. And finally, when that moment of passing comes, all the hypocrites in your life pretend to shed or share a tear – and you’ll only be remembered in history if you were exceptional.

That is what life has become for most of us, after sixty.