ABSTRACT
Those who survive into old age in our society find themselves skirmishing with the mortality tables, for the future lies well astern. They struggle with memory, that curse and comfort, while death, daily, is on the mind, and any effort to ignore it constitutes a foolish evasion and betrayal of the integral self. The marks of our skirmish lie on our faces raddled by wrinkles and in our rheumatic groans. The young, for whom death has no reality, fear us: the civilized among them show us exaggerated courtesy; the semi-civilized ignore us; the barbarians see us as fair game for assault. We are a statistical embarrassment, since medicine, where available, has endowed us with additional years to burden the politician and to distort many a social tale about family solidarity. Much of the time the old are simply invisible. Out on the streets the young do not see an individual with a history, a present and a future; they see An Old Woman or An Old Man, lacking in specific traits, like Lowry’s matchstick people.
