The Unexpected Gift Of Being Old

By Marion Bar-Din

Now, at the age of ninety-four and a half, I’m still experiencing things I hadn’t expected.  Many are good things that warm my old heart.  I have, over the past ten or more years, a new group of middle-aged men and women who come to visit me regularly and are interested in listening carefully to what I say.  These are the sons and daughters of my old friends who have already passed away.  They call me and want to visit.  They ask lots of questions, but soon they are telling me about their lives and look to me as a surrogate parent who may have advice or a story about their mother or father.

Photo by Xochitl Hernandez

I knew all of them from their childhood and many in their adulthood.  Now I see them as middle-aged adults going through a stage of life having no living parents, no one to remember their childhoods.  Oh yes, many have aunts and uncles but they all seem to want another view.  I was a good friend to their mothers or fathers and it helps them to round out the picture of a parent who is no longer here to ask.  I went to their weddings and the funerals of their mothers and fathers.  I have gone to many of their birthday parties when they were young.  My children were their friends.  Their marriages and their divorces were known to me.  I was at some of their parents’ deathbeds, saying my goodbyes.  I was one step away from their families with a different view from that of their parents.  It feels to me like a walk down memory lane.

I have only one rule for myself: I will never divulge anything that would hurt them or shock them.  A friend’s deepest or darkest secrets should die with them, unless of course it was a misunderstanding that is still hurting a child-now-adult.  I’m free to say,  “I don’t know about that.”  This is my unspoken promise to my friends in my adult lifetime who may have trusted me with secrets.  Their middle-aged children seem to silently understand that I will do no harm.   At last count, I fairly regularly see or speak on the phone with nine sons or daughters of old friends.

It gives me pleasure, this unique connection with adults I knew as children, and a unique opportunity to learn about their stories.  We enrich one another’s lives…what more could I ask for? 

Photo by Nancy Rubin

Marion Bar-Din
Born in 1929