An 80-Year-Old Couple at the Grocery Store Taught My Husband and Me About Aging
There’s nothing especially unusual or remarkable about the older couple I wheel past at the cheese case in the grocery store. She’s sporting a faded lavender tracksuit circa the 1970s that’s seen better days. Her husband’s khakis are baggy, and he’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt despite the 90-something degree weather. The duo is huddled together, each steadying themselves with one bony hand on the cart as they squint at a wedge of sharp cheddar...or maybe gouda. The cheese has aged, and so have they.
Aging is considered desirable in cheese and wine—but for people? Not so much. Especially not in Los Angeles, California, where there are billboards for Botox, plastic surgeons, and vein clinics on seemingly every block.
The man and woman both have gray, curly hair in need of a trim. Their skin is thin and pale with age spots, and their hands are lined with blue veins. I guesstimate their age around 80-plus. Normally, as I would be in a rush to get through the grocery store aisles, I might find them annoying. But on this day, I instead find myself smiling at the sweetness of them not only shopping together, but also, growing old together. I wonder: Would one be able to survive without the other? Or will they be like those elderly couples we read about who die within days of one another? And then: Will that be my husband and me 20 years from now?
It wasn’t the first time I pondered the likelihood of whether John and I will grow old as one. We married right out of college, when you just assume you’ll always be together. We’ve done a lot of maturing since. Our marriage has not been perfect, but it has survived raising teenagers, career triumphs and setbacks, and, now, living—thriving, really—in an empty nest. There were moments we didn’t like each other very much, but we always found our way back to “til death do us part.”
And the thing is, I do believe we could survive without one another. We just don’t want to. We want what our parents didn’t have. John’s father died 37 years before his mother, while my mother spent the last 14 years of her life without my dad. Our grandmothers also far outlived their husbands, so we don’t have familial role models for living together through what my grandmother called the “Golden Years.”
When she was 77, we moved my mother into her own apartment in a retirement community. I think it was the first time in her life she’d moved into a place on her own. She had what the doctor called “mild cognitive impairment.” We took away her keys and sold her Mazda—the ultimate loss for a woman who lived in a Midwest suburb where a car is a necessity. Where she lived, she wasn’t able to hop on a bus or subway or stroll a block or two to the corner bakery. The loss of the Mazda was the cherry atop a pile of other losses: husband, career, independence, dignity.
My mom had a bum shoulder from a fall on her front steps the summer before. After that tumble, she recuperated in our home many times over the next few years following myriad surgeries and procedures. I saw firsthand how fast things can slide downhill: hearing, memory, zest for life. At the time of the fall, my mother was still working part time as a priest in the Episcopal Church. A few months later, she was relieved of her ministry, which I think was at least as hard on her as my father’s death. She no longer had a sense of purpose.
Despite the fact that my mother’s arm was never quite right again—and she was very depressed after losing her job—it was the increasing dementia that was the most troubling. It had been easy for me to write off occasional lapses at first but, after months of denial, her uncharacteristic behavior began to add up: getting lost on the way to the dentist; buying an expensive vacuum cleaner from a “very nice” door-to-door salesman; showing up on Christmas Eve with her snow boots on the wrong feet. I began to suspect the church leadership may have noticed her mental decline before the rest of us.
Now, months after encountering that octogenarian couple in the grocery store, I sometimes found myself thinking:
Is one half of that pair now the designated driver—and, if so, which one?
Does he still open the door for her, regardless of whether she’s the passenger or the driver?
Are they still sharp enough to do the crossword?
I hope they’re still able to cook and clean and haven’t become hoarders with too many cats, or a den filled with newspapers and National Geographics going back to the 1960s.
If they have children, do the kids look in on them?
If not...who does check on them?
And then there is the big one: Can they remember to take their medications? I had to make a cheat sheet for my mother to make it easier for her to manage her umpteen remedies: pills for cholesterol, osteoporosis and reflux; more for memory and mood; three blood pressure medicines. Does my grocery store couple have a son or daughter who make them cheat sheets?
Maybe they didn’t need one. I hope John and I won’t need one. Not for pills, or for anything else. I’d made a couple of other diagrams for my mom: One for the TV remote, and another for her cell phone. Despite that, she still always tried to turn on the television using her phone. She often thought she needed a new mobile, but usually it was just because she’d forgotten how to turn it on. That’s when she’d call me from the office in the retirement community and my heart would skip a beat when I saw the Caller ID, fearing another fall or worse. Technology was never her strong suit.
For all I know, the grocery store man in the too-big khaki pants and his lavender-clad sweetheart were computer whizzes, or pharmacists—or one of each—and they’ve got their pills and remotes and iPhones down pat. Maybe they’re not as feeble as I imagine them to be and have no need for grab bars and raised toilet seats and disposable underwear.
Three years after my mother’s death, I think about these strangers hours after I’m home from the store on a Saturday afternoon. I still consider what their evening will be like, what they’ll have for dinner, and if they’ll watch a movie on TV—or if they’ll sit in comfy his-and-hers chairs reading books while listening to big band music or piano concerti. Maybe tomorrow they’ll go to church together and hold hands in the same pew they’ve been sitting in for the last 50 or 60 years. Afterward, they’ll go to their favorite diner for breakfast and the waitress will know their names, even though I do not.
Maybe someone—a friend, or neighbor, or family member—will visit in the afternoon and stay for an early supper that includes a homemade pie, and they’ll shake their heads in dismay while discussing current events. Later, they’ll kiss each other goodnight and murmur in the dark about something they forgot at the grocery store—and then they’ll sleep until the birds begin chirping at daybreak.
We never know what the following day will bring, let alone what the next decades have in store. Honestly, I don’t spend excessive time thinking about the future, except for my fantasy of having my writing published to wide acclaim. I’m 59. Retirement still feels far off, though I do picture John and me in a beautiful spot with water, or mountains, or both, a place that’s near our two kids and their spouses, and possibly some future grandkids. There will likely be a dog.
Funny, the paradox of wanting to defy age, while at the same time wishing for it. I can’t picture a life in which either John or I grow old without each other. Of course, pragmatism insists we plan for such things, but I remain generally in denial about the possibility—pushing away vague fears that I could develop dementia and hearing loss like my mom, or heart disease, arthritis, and cancer like my dad—as if wrinkles, muscle stiffness, and stubborn belly fat aren’t reminders enough that I’m pushing 60.
But even if I could know the future, I don’t want to—ignorance being bliss and all. I’d rather be surprised, delighted, and hopeful. So if John and I are together deciding between the Jarlsberg and the Havarti 25 years from now, I pray I’ll know how fortunate we are, because I have a feeling aging “gracefully” just might be tied to gratitude.
And maybe one day in the future, there’ll be some 50-something woman looking at a 2044 (yikes!) version of John and me, one who notices our veiny hands and silver hair. I pray we’ll be aware enough to keep our cart out of her way, both in the cheese aisle and over by the Chardonnay. And I hope she’ll smile at us as she realizes that she wants the same ‘til-death-do-we-part, in-sickness-and-in-health, fruitfully aging partnership for herself.
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