Self-portrait: Devonport author, 80, alert, in $3m house

I turned 80 in January. Eighty is old. In one’s 70s one can kid oneself with the fiction that 70 isn’t actually old. “70 is the new 50”, and similar bromides, are offered. But 80 is 80 and that’s old, no ifs, no buts.

So, how does it feel, now that I’m officially old? Mixed feelings. Gratitude, that I’ve made it so far, sorrow for my many contemporaries who didn’t. People like Pamela, who died of breast cancer at 37. Or Stephen, who died of cardiac arrest at the age of 68. Or Michael, who perished in a fiery car crash at 60. Or Rose, who succumbed to a brain tumour at 62. And Malcolm, who was beaten by bowel cancer at 63. All fine people, taken much too soon. The only conceivable consolation in these premature deaths is that they made those who survived them value being alive even more.

So, there is a great deal of thankfulness that I’ve made it to my eighth decade. Accompanied, though, by questions that lurk and disturb. How many more birthdays will I be granted? What ghastly illnesses lie skulking in my future? There are secondary questions, too: What will I do with my remaining years? Where will I go from now on? Will my next book be my last?

For the time being, these questions are unanswerable. Yet they nag away at my consciousness. A skirmish with death four years ago – in the form of a blood clot in the lung – was a harsh reminder of ever-present mortality. With the support of modern medicine and dedicated care, I recovered. And was left with the guiding truth that from now on, every day is precious.

In the western world, the process of gerontification is global. In her penetrating memoir A Life in Time, English novelist Penelope Lively points out that: “In 1961 there were just 592 people over the age of 100 in Britain; by 2060 there will be 455,000 centurions.” It’s safe to assume that the New Zealand statistics would be broadly similar to these. After all, the evidence of our ageing population is everywhere: advertisements for ‘retirement villages’ saturate our newspapers and magazines.

Across the street from my own home is one such ‘sunset village’, a vast, new, stylish complex. Its advertisements are filled with photos of jolly geriatrics revelling in its many facilities. It claims to provide, ‘Freedom to Live the Way You Want’. But it’s still an institution, and virtually a necropolis, so it holds no appeal for me. Or for other elderlies. “I want to die in my own bed in my own home,” as one fellow-octogenarian remarked to me recently. Me too.

I regularly meet with two groups of other aged people, all well educated professionals. Writers, lawyers, a doctor, an editor. All are wide readers. It’s stimulating to be in their company, their wit, wisdom and experience help keep the dreaded dementia at bay. It’s comforting to listen to their latest organ recitals (briefly) and to observe (slyly) their own deterioration: their hard of hearing, their stumbling gait, their crepey, varicosed flesh. Myopia is a given. There are shared worries. They too, forget names, leave their glasses or wallets in unusual places, suffer anxiety over their driving licence renewals.

However, these mutual difficulties provide a kind of solace, a regular zone of shared experience. We are all, in our various ways, attempting to defy the indignities commensurate with old age.

One of our number summed up the vicissitudes of old age by confessing: “I get stiff in all the wrong places.” Another commented drolly, on seeing a passing bus whose flanks were emblazoned with the words ZERO EMISSIONS, “Could be referring to me.” A self-deprecating sense of humour is a useful antidote to ageing.

Perhaps worse than physical impairments are the mental ones, the onset of that ‘death-in-life’ condition, dementia. No known cure for that, although they’re working on it. I have a close friend afflicted with the condition. On the phone the other day, in response to my question, “How are you, Michael?” he replied, “Not bad.” Pause. “Actually, not so good. I’ve got this thing called … can’t remember its name … what’s its name? Oh yes, that’s right, it’s called …. dementia.” A tiny triumph, that he could recall the very condition that is blocking off so much of his colourful personal history.

Other octogenarians I observe but don’t know, notably the US President, Joe Biden. Joe’s stumbling gait and hesitant diction are disturbingly similar to my own, the significant difference being that I’m not the leader of the Free World. Being President of the United States is no job for an 81-year-old. Every time I watch news clips of Joe disembarking from a plane, I find myself thinking, “Please don’t fall, Joe, please … keep your hand on that rail.” (Unlike his 77-year-old, orange-haired political opponent, who I can’t wait to see take a tumble). For we elderly, falling is a very real possibility, every hour of the waking day. ‘Trip Hazards’ abound, and too often become an actuality.

Other realties of old age include the knowledge that some avenues, previously open, are now shut off. During my middle years I made a living from travel writing. I went to places distant and exotic, and wrote about them. I loved exploring overseas islands, cities, villages, mountains, forests, reefs. I was never an intrepid traveller, but once in England I discovered the source of the Thames and wrote a story about it.  Relishing travel, I used the experiences to compile three books of journey writing.

But now? Mass travel holds little appeal. Airports are too hectic, the bureaucracy and discomforts of travel I now find intolerable. If it were possible to press a send button and I could be somewhere new – the way I can dispatch an entire manuscript in seconds to a publisher in London – then I would still travel. But I can’t, so I don’t. To partially compensate, there’s still the Gold Card and Waiheke Island. Thanks, Winston. Yet there is the extraordinary example of the English travel writer Norman Lewis (1908-2003), who was still traversing the world’s uncomfortable places alone while well into his nineties. Intrepid, Lewis was, and the author of 20 travel books and 12 novels. Instead of persisting with the long-haul travel tussle, I take solace from the fact that I live in Devonport, surely one of the loveliest places on Earth.

With advanced age comes the suspicion that like time itself, the world has speeded up. What used to take years now takes just a few months, while motorway driving – once casually accepted – frightens me because the cars, trucks and motorbikes surrounding me are going so bloody fast. I can’t keep up. This is not quite a ‘stop the world I want to get off’ moment, but it’s a similar sensation. Is it really so very necessary for so many vehicles to go so fast?  

Money has changed in significant ways for we elderly persons. There’s so much more of it, yet it buys less and less. The house I have lived in for 43 years was bought for $80,000, an outrageous price in 1981. Now I’m told it’s worth nearly $3,000,000. That’s ridiculous. Some young people take out mortgages of two million dollars for a house. Two million. Unimaginable. Where will it end? In tears, probably. Also, in shops or cafes, young staff look at me curiously when I tender cash. Cash? Notes and coins? Why doesn’t the old guy just use a card, like everyone else?

Once casually accepted activities are now verboten for an octogenarian. Once I had the agility of a chimp; now even going up ladders frightens me. The sense of balance is one of the first faculties to be lost. Things have become unsteady, so cycling is not a good idea any more. Of other physical activities, jogging is inadvisable but walking is recommended. And rightly so. I love walking, provided the terrain is level. Sea swimming, also a lifelong love, still heightens the sense of being fully alive. But board riding is just a blissful memory.

Another of the pleasures that remain high on the preferred list is reading. Like all writers, I’m an avid reader, have been since childhood. That interest has only intensified with age. Reading, moreover, is recommended by all the experts as another means of forestalling dementia. So, my library just gets larger and larger. And I still devour the Herald, in spite of its perpetual catalogueing of misery, its ‘If it bleeds it leads’ predilection.  

Writing, too, is a way of keeping dementia at bay. I still take joy in its challenges and satisfactions. Writing remains a delight as well as a compulsion. Also, discovering new words in English, and deploying them suitably. For instance, ‘icthyology’, ‘dendrology’, ‘proliferous’ and ‘taxonomy’, were among the words I discovered while I was researching my novel based on the life of naturalist Joseph Banks (The Collector, 2023). New words confront and inspire in equal measure. Who knew, for example, that there is a word for an insane person who believes that he or she is a wolf? (It’s a lycanthrope – not a word of great usefulness, but still interesting).

Counterbalancing such discoveries is the distress at not being able to recall words – usually people’s names – that once sprang instantly to mind. Such faltering is a source of continuing frustration.

Of the notable compensations of old age, the most abiding are the love of family and friends. I have a wonderfully supportive wife whose nursing skills are proving increasingly valuable, three exceptional adult children and their equally splendid partners, and five adorable young grandchildren. But I worry about their future. What will the world be like when Georgia, Josh, Alex, Margot and Sebastian are 80? I worry that our world, and they, may no longer exist.

Graeme Lay’s next book, Beyond the Reef: Selected Short Stories (Quentin Wilson Publishing) will be released later this year.