How to Age Disgracefully

by Clare Pooley

She’d rather imagined that she’d spend her older age surrounded by loving friends and family. Well, perhaps not loving friends and family, but at least a group of familiar people connected by history, genetics, or shared finances and real estate.

She appeared to have jumped out of the frying pan of sexism and into the fire of ageism. The final frontier of isms.

Art heard the man say, in a voice that was entirely instruction at the expense of affection.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d become irrelevant, or invisible, even—it had crept up on him gradually over the years. He often felt like a ghost. He occupied the same world as ordinary mortals, but most of them appeared to see straight through him. It used to make him angry, but then he’d discovered that invisibility had its advantages.

And, right next to them, the ancient Tower of London and the majestic, winding Thames, which had seen the city evolve over centuries, through the Great Fire and the Black Death, outlasting millions of its inhabitants who had, for their short time on this earth, fooled themselves into feeling significant.

Building a life meant making connections, and that meant being visible, which made you vulnerable.