Old

I met this old boy at the bus stop today in town. He was struggling with his walker so I gave him a hand. He lives about a mile beyond my stop, and lives alone, not getting out of the house much, and I couldn't help wondering about his life.

Perhaps it's a middle aged thing or perhaps some rampant kind of sentimentality rearing its head, but I find old men of a certain kind increasingly compelling. I think it might have something to do with the absence of my should-have-been 80 old dad, on my mind a lot lately. I feel a lot more indifferent to old women (though that might have something to do with recent history, having spent 2 years living with my mother-in-law and her dementia).

The particular kind of old men who move me are rather like my dad would have been. I find the ones who hang onto their old-fashioned dress sense, their pride in themselves surviving, particularly poignant. There's one in particular in my mind now, in a tweed hat, an old brown suit, faintly checked shirt, tartan tie. The shirt is clean but crumpled. Ironing has become too much for him now. But his conker-brown shoes are shiny, polished like mirrors. I see him shuffling along, slightly bent at the shoulder, with a string shopping bag, sometimes. He goes into Tesco and buys a half loaf of bread, a tin of luncheon meat, a packet of loose tea, a solitary orange. His hands shake when he pays.

Perhaps when you get to the point in life where your own middle age is undeniable, and in fact, looking at mortality squarely and mathematically in the face, you're almost certainly past the middle - you've reached the top of the hill and frankly, are now heading OVER IT - the struggles of the old start to seem relevant to your life suddenly.

I was close to tears on the bus and the reason was that the old boy with the walker was so earnestly grateful for the help. You can't see it on this photograph but he has a wonderful face (I may have to stalk him to get a blip of it). He was pink and blue with the cold, and his eyes a little rheumy, but their expression was so full of feeling, and in an instant I'd projected onto him goodness, and suffering, and a life full of incident which has ended somehow in this loneliness.