Oedipus and the Meaning of Aging

Abstract

“Old age,” someone once said, “is like a rock on which many founder and some find shelter.” When I was a child, the old people in my family were a sheltering rock; they occupied a place in my inner landscape that has only recently begun to change. My grandparents and great aunts always seemed the same. They were there every weekend, on holidays, whenever we needed them. My brother, sister, and I ate at their tables, roamed their houses, climbed in their yards, ravished their presents, and took for granted their immortality. When my father died at the age of 27, I was immediately transformed into an aged four-year-old, a senex puer. For many years, I nursed private intuitions of ultimate truth alongside feelings of loneliness, guilt, and depression. My father’s death broke the sequence of generations; I felt that I too would die young, and could not live childhood’s normal innocence and exuberance. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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