‘What’s It Like to Be Old?’

Dear Eleanor,

We were sitting in the sun at that lovely café on a side street in Paris, when you turned to me, appealing.

“I’m 59,” you said with a haunted look. “In a few months I’ll be 60.” Then ducking your head shyly, “What’s it like to be—”

You stopped. But I knew what you were too tactful to ask. What’s it like to be Old?

“I’m afraid,” you whispered.

Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be afraid? You move now to the stage of “crone” and “hag.” Fear is mostly what we hear about aging—fear of wrinkles; fear of loss; fear of diminishment; fear of humiliation and of being unwanted, abandoned; fear of the inexorable decline into chronic pain and death; fear of finding ourselves like King Lear, crying naked on the cliffs against the raging storm. It’s fear exacerbated by a $48.4 billion beauty business pushing 18-year-old airbrushed skin as our ideal.

Who wouldn’t be afraid?

I remember as I turned 60 asking my Aunt Kate that same question.

“What’s it like in your 60s?”

She answered with a toss of her chin, visible even over the phone line: “Oh, Sophy, you won’t even notice your 60s. Now at 90,” she had murmured thoughtfully, “you begin to slow down.”

She died at 103. That’s forty more years along.

Sitting with you that day in Paris, I repeated her words. “Oh, Eleanor, you won’t even notice your 60s. I bought my horse at 68. I stopped fox hunting at 80.” (Mostly because of moving to Massachusetts, as it happens, but also because a fall when galloping to hounds is dangerous at my age—any age.)

The zeros are always scary. I remember being anxious when I reached 29 about turning 30—it felt so ... old. I didn’t celebrate my fiftieth birthday until, at 55, I threw myself a fiftieth, and then only for my closest friends. That’s how ashamed I was of age. And afraid. Buried deep in our DNA is the memory of unwanted women burned at the stake as witches, or drowned (surviving proved them witches, to be killed again).

Sipping my espresso that warm September day, I thought how, at 85, this is one of the most interesting periods of my whole life. I have never felt so happy, so free. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. (Well, I would have, except my friend Death was elsewhere occupied.)

Now back home in Massachusetts, I keep musing on your question. What’s it like to be old? At 85, I’m old. I’m told I’m old. I’m regarded as old. I don’t feel old. I feel about 55.

So, I thought I’d try to answer your question.

Immediately, intellect rears up, scolding that mine is the experience of only one comfortably situated white woman living in America in this young century. How dare I say one word about aging? The subject is inchoate, chaotic, confusing. I am deeply aware of the sheer randomness of being born to the right circumstances. I could have been an impoverished woman in Mississippi, with the worst health care system in the world (equaled only by Mali in Africa!)—who could die from an abscessed tooth, if you can imagine, for lack of a dentist or of money to pay or transportation to reach one if she could. (So much is solved simply by money!) I could have been born a migrant fleeing torture or war or climate change, or else homeless, thrown begging on the streets by medical bills I could not pay. Twenty-five percent of seniors live on $15,000 or less, says Bernie Sanders. How dare I speak of the wonders of aging?

But of course I will, because at my age, why not?

When I was a little girl, I truly believed that 25 was old. After that, nothing more happened in your life. You just went on and on, trudging the same boring round of days with nothing new to divert or delight. When I married at 23, my 5-year-old nephew turned my hand thoughtfully in his, as if examining my lifeline, and murmured sadly, “When you come back down the aisle, you’ll be old.”

I rather felt the same. After marriage I’d be a “matron.” And to show I’m not alone in this curious thinking, consider one play by Beth Henley, in which the 30-year-old woman is listed as a “matron.” At 30! Oh, in my youth we had lots of words to denigrate age: you were a spinster at 26. At 45, unmarried, you were so old you’d become a failure. I remember at 45 being surprised at how rich the world had suddenly become.

So here I am, at 85, wading in the mud of old age. What do I have to tell you, Eleanor, about being old?

It’s not what you think. This is one of the happiest periods of my life. Perhaps the easiest way to tell you what it’s like is to write about my days, recognizing that I am only one person, that each life is different, and each is fascinating right up to the end. Which may be another beginning, if what I hear is true, and noting also that even at this age, I still engage in denial, resentment, annoyance, indignation. I’m still learning—can you imagine? Wouldn’t you think I’d have finished learning by now?

I may not send these letters to you. Perhaps they are principally for me, for I go along with E. M. Forster’s statement: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Keep your heart high, Eleanor. It’s not so bad.

Love,
Sophy

Excerpted from The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old by Sophy Burnham. Published May 20, 2025, by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Copyright © 2025 by Sophy Burnham.