Marie de Hennezel - The Art of Growing Old: Aging with Grace

The Art

of

Growing Old

Also available in English

by Marie de Hennezel

Intimate Death

The Art

of

Growing Old

Aging with Grace

Marie de Hennezel

Translated by Sue Dyson

VIKING

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

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First American edition

Published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Marie de Hennezel, 2008

English translation copyright Susanna Lea Associates, 2010

All rights reserved

Originally published in French in France as La chaleur du coeur empeche nos corps de rouiller;
viellir sans etre vieux by Editions Robert Laffont, 2008.

First published in English in Australia by Scribe Publications, 2010

Im Lucky by Christopher Thiery, published by permission of the author.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Hennezel, Marie de, 1946

[Chaleur du coeur empche nos corps de rouiller. English]

The art of growing old: aging with grace / Marie de Hennezel; translated by Sue Dyson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-56702-9

1. AgingPsychological aspects. 2. Aging. 3. Older peoplePsychology. I. Title.

BF724.55.A35H46 2012

155.6719dc23

2011038023

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To my grandchildren:

La, Marie, Blanche, Gabriel, Lonard, Cleste,

and those to come

To my mother

If the only thing I had to say

was that all is lost, I would keep my mouth shut.

Jean-Louis Chrtien

The cruelest kind of growing old is not organic:

it is the growing old of hearts.

Christiane Singer

In my work as a therapist and a counselor, as well as in the hundreds of conversations Ive had around the world since publishing this book, Ive found, to no ones surprise, that there is nothing older than not wanting to grow old. This is as true at home in France, where sixty-eight-year-old Catherine Deneuve is still considered a sex symbol, as it is in the United States. Our world presents us with a disastrous image of old age. Women and men everywhere fear dying badly, of ending their lives alone, unloved, perhaps dependent or suffering from dementia, in lifeless places, far from everything.

Instead of confronting this fear, we ward it off by clinging to our youth in a rather pathetic state of denial. In so doing, we run the risk of missing out on what I call here the work of growing oldthat is to say, cultivating a positive awareness of aging.

I embarked on writing this book in order to set the record straight about the reality of aging, in France and everywhere else. I read documents and listened to accounts that discouraged me. But as my research progressed, I became aware of an exciting new understanding of age, guided by some exemplary characters to whom Ill introduce you. They convinced me that the worst is not inevitable. The keys to a fulfilling old age do exist, and its up to our generation to discover them and pass them on. Its up to us, the baby boomers, to invent a new art of growing oldwhich is a paradox, as it means accepting the inevitability of aging without becoming old.

How are we to become the bearers of good tidings rather than poisonous ones to those around us? I propose that our exploration be guided by the belief that something within us does not grow old. I shall call it the heart. I dont mean the organ, which does of course age, but the capacity to love and to desire. The heart I refer to is that inexplicable, incomprehensible force that keeps the human being alive, and which Spinoza christened conatus: primordial energy or vital endeavor.

It is this heart that can help us push on through our fears, and bear us up amid the worst ordeals of old age.

A bb Pierre, a well-known French priest who dedicated his life to helping the poor and the destitute, has just died. I queue up for an hour in the Rue Saint-Jacques to bow my head before his coffin, laid out in the Val-de-Grce chapel. An immense photograph hangs on the hospital gates, showing passers-by a face that overwhelms them, a face that emanates both profound torment and an immense tenderness.

Abb Pierre used to say that we must always keep both eyes open: one eye on the worlds suffering so that we can fight against it, and the other on its wondrous beauty so that we may give thanks for it.

I have just devoted two years to writing about the experience of growing old, and throughout this exploration of the aging process I have attempted to keep both eyes open: one on all the inevitable pain, which frightens us so much, and the other on the joys that are in store for us. In order to do so, I have attempted to distance myself from the negativity, from the ambient pessimism, which foresees only bad experiences at this stage of life, and at the same time I have tried to avoid slipping into euphoria and embracing the myth of an idyllic old age.

Obtaining a balance has not been easy, for our society has a discouraging view of old age. The words decline, horror, and affliction, which spring to our lips, speak volumes about the disgust and fear that the sufferings of aging and death inspire in us.

We could leave it be, not discuss it, allow ourselves to forget about it, think about something else. That is what senior citizens do when they refuse to grow old and try to remain pathetically young and active for as long as possible.

Or, on the other hand, we can tackle old age with humoreven deride it.

Personally, as I kept one eye open to all the evils that threaten us, I began my own long descent into hell. The catastrophic image we have of old age is contagious, and I began to understand why my generation would rather close its eyes, why people change the subject as soon as I ask them what they imagine their later years will be like. In fact, I was so downcast that I almost abandoned my plan to write about such a depressing subject.