the letter

When I'm 70 years, with a silver crown of hair, when my skin no longer snugly fits the frame... I hope I will be able to tell my children about the magic of aging....just as it is so ideally and divinely described in the following letter.....

Thanks to Sarah who found the letter in the newspaper....I probably should start reading the papers.... I seem to be missing out;)



The other day, my granddaughter asked me how I felt about being old.
I was taken aback: I don't think of myself as old.
Seeing my reaction, she was embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question.
Old age, I decided, is a gift.
I'm now probably for the first time in my life, the person I've always wanted to be.
Not my body - sometimes I despair over that, but I don't agonise for long.
I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life and my loving family for less grey hair or a flatter belly.
As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, less critical.
I've become my own friend. I don't scold myself for eating that extra biscuit, for mot making my bed or for buying that silly cement gnome (which looks so avant garde on my patio).
I'm entitled to overeat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I've seen too many friends leave this world too soon, before they understood the great freedom that comes with ageing.
Whose business is it if I choose to read until 4am and sleep until noon?
I dance by myself to those wonderful tunes of the Fifties and Sixties - and if I wish to weep over a lost love, I will.
I know I'm sometimes forgetful - but some of life is better forgotten, and I eventually remember the important things.
Over the years my heart has been broken.
How can your heart not break when you loose a loved one or when a child suffers?
But broken hearts are what give us strength, understanding and compassion.
I'm blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn grey and to have my youthful laughs forever etched in deep grooves on my face.
I can say 'no' and mean it. I can say 'yes' and mean it.
As you get older it's easier to be definite.
You care less about what other people think.
I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So - I like being old. It has set me free.
I like the person I have become.
I'm not going to live forever, but while I'm still here, I won't waste time moaning about what might have been or worrying about what will be.
For the first time in my life, I don't have a reason to do the things I don't want to do.
If I want to play games on the computer all day, lie on the settee and watch old films for hours, I have earned that right.
I have put in my time doing everything for others, so now I can be a bit selfish without feeling guilty.
I sometimes feel sorry for the young. They face a far different world from the one I knew growing up, where we feared the law, respected the old, the King and Queen, and our country.
I never felt the need to use filthy language in order to express myself.
And in any case, the young will also grow old someday.
I'm grateful to have been born when I was, into a kinder, gentler world.
Yes, I like being old....

-Pony Moore, Droxford, Hants-