I’m 72 and this extract from “Little Gidding” by T S Eliot (1888-1965) has lived in my mind for many years. It’s a painful view of old age. Eliot was only about 54 when he published the poem in 1942 during the war. The poem is part of the “Four Quartets,” which can be read again and again without full understanding but always with spiritual uplift. For me these lines, which come near the middle of the long poem, are some of the most powerful in the “Four Quartets.” When I was a medical student the “old” were those over 65 and the “very old” those over 75. I’m poised between the two but don’t feel old, which is perhaps a delusion. I know, however, that I am old, and I certainly don’t want to be young agin. Last weekend I walked some 25 miles through valleys and hills with a friend who is 82, and we suffered  no pain. The modal age of death in Britain is 87, but there are plenty of people who fall apart and die before that.

My body is perhaps beginning to fall asunder in that I can’t read with my left eye, my left knee hurts at times, and I keep having to have teeth removed. “Sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything.” I’m uncertain if my soul is falling asunder. How would I know? The gift of Eliot’s that I most recognise is the conscious impotence of rage at human folly, but that’s not so new—and I’m also much amused by human folly. Indeed, I am, I think, more amused than raging.

I’m not yet feeling the rending pain of re-enanctment of all that I have done and been, but a friend who is 95 expressed exactly that. I am aware that many people as they feel death come close feel the need to talk and possibly unburden themselves of the harm they have done to others.

It is with gratitude that I look forward to the refining fire, and I will do my best to move in measure, like a dancer. 

From “Little Gidding”:

‘Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.’