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Reviews
BOOK REVIEW: Author chronicles realities of aging Mary Jacobs, Mar 12, 2010
By Mary Jacobs Staff Writer
Talking with God in Old Age: Meditations and Psalms Missy Buchanan Upper Room Books, 2010 96 pages, paperback
Bette Davis is credited with the saying, “Old age is not for sissies.” Read this book and you’ll see what she meant.
Talking with God in Old Age (Upper Room Books, 2010) by Missy Buchanan (a writer who contributes Aging Well columns to the Reporter) offers a series of meditations, each with a passage from the Psalms, on the real-life issues of old age.
These aren’t vague or euphemistic paeans of spirituality in the golden years. Some prayers read like biblical lamentations: “Why have you left me on earth for so long? I feel utterly useless.”
Many include nitty-gritty observations about unromantic topics like “Rehab” (“Some say rehab is for my own good. So easy for them to say!”) or “Pain” (“Medication helps, but eventually it grinds me down.”) or “Thick Ankles and Varicose Veins” (“If I peel back the special socks I wear, there’s a spider web of purple veins on my legs. Yellowed toenails, too.”)
Despite the unvarnished chronicling of the many indignities of old age, Ms. Buchanan manages to maintain a light touch. A meditation on naps prays that “no one will see me with my mouth gaped open.” Another on “Grumpy Moments” implores: “Forgive this woe-is-me attitude, dear God. When I am miffed, help me dust off my better self. Show me something to chuckle about.”
This is a slim volume, and because it’s printed in large type, would make a good gift for the practical-minded older reader who’s comfortable with the idea that God can handle griping and not-so-pretty details.
For anyone else, it’s a short course in compassion—a vivid glimpse at why life isn’t easy for elderly people. And why, with its many travails, old age is best handled with prayer.
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