my gay english TA played baz luhrman’s version of shakespeare’s romeo & juliet for us in discussion class today. so i’ve been listening to a lot of everclear, radiohead, and garbage (shirley manson, that is) from the soundtrack. when i think about that movie i think about grade eight, when times seemed a bit easier. but they only seem easier because i’m looking at it from this point in my life where the depression and stress levels have shot up exponentially, and everything before this point seems like a rerun of punky brewster. from this sprung forth ideas about growing up and growing old and wasting away into a skeleton-like creature.

everyone’s always reminiscing about their high school years, when times were good and freedom was cheap (even though that was only months ago for me). people nowadays would love to go back and relive their childhood. it’s like this dream that middle-aged men have when they start buying hip corvettes and porsches and drive into the sunset with their comb-overs flying in the summer breeze. but i don’t want a comb-over; i don’t want to be middle-aged. i had always feared growing old.

when i was forced to work a very early shift in a vancouver mall a few years ago, i witnessed the daily infestation of 80-something seniors ambling around the halls. i remember one couple vividly. an elderly husband was getting his wife juice from A&W. his wife’s eyes were set to staring forward at the wall, at nothing really. she was standing with the complete aid of those walker-type things that resemble the metal support carts in skating rinks. she was shuffling her feet in no apparent direction and her skin was hanging off of her bones. i could pick out liverspots from under her sleeves. she couldn’t speak articulately but only mumbled gibberish, from what i could hear sitting at a table by myself. i couldn’t tell if she even understood where she was or what was going on around her. all i knew was that i never wanted to be her. the thought of not understanding the world and not being able to absorb and appreciate every single aspect of it was enough to break my heart, if not for completely selfish reasons.

i fought the urge to be disgusted with her, this elderly woman who couldn’t discern reality from fantasy and who was most likely wearing a chaffing plastic diaper. i didn’t want to be her. i tried not to stare too hard at the scene before me as the woman’s eyes remained on the wall. my disgust suddenly moved from the woman to myself. i mean, who the hell did i think i was to be thinking these things? how much of life had i actually lived that i could discard this woman as geriatric waste?

finally, her husband came back. he tilted the juice to her thin lips and helped her drink it. he carefully helped her ease into the nearest chair and sat down right beside her. he began talking to her in a way that one could mistake them for best friends since infancy. she smiled sometimes and he laughed at his own jokes. she never directly looked at him, but his eyes were glued to her as he talked about anything and everything. at that point, i wanted to be her. not in the geriatric, depends diaper sense. i wanted to be a woman who grew up with a man by her side who wouldn’t be embarrassed when she grew old and couldn’t fend for herself. i wanted to be a woman who was loved so fully by her husband that he would bring her juice without her asking and push it against her lips both cautiously and caringly… no matter what age.

i no longer felt disgusted by the end of the scene as i headed to work. i felt touched that i could share such a brief intimate moment with complete strangers who weren’t even trying to appear natural. i felt happy about growing old, knowing that there were still things that i could look forward to, no matter what age.