Golden years: 'The best is yet to be'

"Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made." -- Robert Browning

"Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained by virtuous living" -- Proverbs 16:31

I was sure this was the rationalization of someone over the hill when I first encountered these words as a young student of English literature. However, Robert Browning's tribute to age in his poem "Rabbi Ben Ezra" intrigued me enough to be remembered into the latter days of my life. And, on reflection, I see his wisdom.

Robert Browning actually wrote these words when he was 52 years old and a widower, three years after the death of his beloved wife, Elizabeth Browning. Perhaps he was dreaming ... wishful thinking, because he had so deeply loved his wife. Literary experts believe that the meaning of the poem was that a person is not to be measured by his or her work capabilities, but by character molded by time and life.

Throughout my life, when asked about beauty, I always seemed to startle my interrogators by stating that the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen was my grandmother. She had a soft, lilac beauty about her. Her face always wore a smile, crowned by silver hair waved gently to a bun atop her head. She carried herself with dignity, yet warmed to my needs and those of others. Her contented life with my grandfather reflected perfectly, "Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be..."

Youth is so encumbered with stress -- pressures of education and then of acquisition and career. With well over 50 percent of marriages failing, add the strain of relationships. Conversely, I do not mean to minimize acute problems of age -- health, difficult monetary position and loss of loved ones. I only notice that I find my latter years and those of many others somewhat more comfortable, often more productive and frequently more enriched.

Golden achievements

Many examples are available of the capabilities of those in their later years. Laplace worked on his astronomy until he passed on at 70, crying, "What we know is nothing; what we do not know is immense!" John Milton wrote the 10-volume "Paradise Lost" at age 57, 13 years after becoming totally blind. Ludwig Von Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony after he became deaf in the fifth decade of his life.

Grandma Moses began painting when most people retire. Bismarck did his greatest work after he was 70.

My own mother, in the eighth decade of her life, established a library and school in Pakistan while there with my father who, also in his 70s, worked as a consulting engineer assisting that developing nation. My husband, in his 80s, conducts his own business.

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When there first was legislation proposed in the Ohio legislature that would have allowed life-support systems to be discontinued for the elderly in hospitals if the medical personnel deemed their quality of life to be less than worthy of continuation. At the time, there were two legislators there who were father and son. The father was very ill in a local hospital where he had been confined for some time. His son refused to support the bill stating that a person's present productivity should never be criteria for whether or not he or she could contribute to the world in other ways, and should never be reason for allowing one to die. The bill went down in resounding defeat.

Peace and serenity

Now, as I reflect on my own life, I can see how "the last of life" can be that "for which the first was made." As a youth who first heard these words, I had my world ahead of me -- health, hope, possibilities -- but I was not often deeply happy, content nor serene. I suffered acute sensitivity and had years of difficult strivings ahead of me.

Now, as I walk through the more mature years of life, I find I'm freed from the painful extremes of sensitivity, and that the years of striving have woven themselves into a smoother fabric of harmonious relationships. There is a peaceful serenity, now, under which lies a common denominator of contentment. Certainly, troubles come now, as always, and I foresee many more as age creeps on, but I view them from a different perspective and their relative importance purports less emotional stress. I sit on a cushion of a lifetime of experience, and am buffered by the good memories stored for rainy days.

After all, Goethe wrote "Faust" shortly before his death at 99, and Gladstone took up a new language at 70. Mary Sarton, as she wrote a poem almost every day of her 80th year, noted in her journal: "And where have I been? Through a thicket of ill health into an extraordinary time of happiness and fulfillment, more than I ever dreamed possible."

After making one's way through the labyrinth of youth, with character molded on the anvil of life, it does seem perhaps "the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made."

(Adapted from version published in Companion of St. Francis and St. Anthony, April 1990, and in Rivista Siglio XXI, 1996.)

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