Elders: The Long Journey Home

Abstract

The term ‘elders’ has been used to refer to those who might once have been called ‘seniors’, ‘retirees’ or ‘OAPs’ (Old Age Pensioners). The Middle English eldre—connoting wisdom and experience—signals a discomfort-zone. ‘Elders’ are us, embarked on an unknowable end-of-life journey. Similarly, ‘elder-speak’ designates an artificial manner of speaking (reduced speed, simplified vocabulary, exaggerated diction), implying that those of advanced years have limited cognition and linguistic competence. The memory- and language-losses of later years challenge literary and visual representation. We risk becoming ventriloquists, eavesdroppers, or voyeurs in our efforts to accompany the old on their last journey. Listening with ‘the third ear’ (Theodor Reik’s term, borrowed from Nietzsche)—or seeing with the third eye—potentially allows for a non-intrusive mode of understanding the old, and also ourselves. Women are often care-partners. But sometimes they are the ones cared for—part of an aging couple. My three examples will be Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Buried Giant (2015); later life seen through the lens of contemporary British Object Relations psychoanalysis; and Paddy Summerfield’s photographic essay about his elderly parents, Mother and Father (2014). Read together, they underline the role of aesthetics in understanding the meanings and losses of old age.