On Growing Old...Really Old

. Pierre Auguste Renoir (French artist, 1841-1919) Old Woman, Madame le Coeur


Eighty-Five
by Betty Lockwood

As I grow older, I feel younger
more eager, more full of love.
More alive the closer I move to death.
More whole the closer I move into blight.
The sweeter life grows as fervent
clamors of youth pass.
Passions of old age take deeper
flavor, ripened, more nuanced.
More easily words and affections
flow when the self-conscious gaucherie
of youth has passed.

Wholeness suddenly is mine;
ragged edges of fear hemmed.

Mirrors say Look. Do not
be afraid. You are what you are.

by Betty Lockwood from A Matriach's Song  Peter Randall Publisher, Portsmouth, NH 2001


George Wesley Bellows (American artist, 1882-1925) Aunt Fanny 1920


Christian Seybold (German artist, 1697-1768) Old Woman

Christian von Schneidau (American artist, 1893–1976) Woman Reading

Henry-Jules-Jean Geoffroy (French genre painter 1853-1924) Old Woman’s Head