Did I Ever Tell You...?: Faith in Later Life

By Neville Smith

Why do we want to share our memories?

At a time when an increasing number of people are living longer, for some, later years may be enjoyed as ripe old age. For others, they may be a time of uncertainty, isolation and loneliness. For both, memories can be a resource from the past which enables us to live in the present. For that to happen, memories need to be shared.

An Anglican priest for sixty years, Neville Smith seeks a Christian understanding of what it means to be old. Through the Bible, the Church and his own personal experience, he describes the epiphanies of faith, which we can find in many different areas of life as we grow older and as things change around us, leaving us behind in an unfamiliar world.

The Church must also move on. As it does so, this book comes as a timely reminder that in looking increasingly to the future, the Church must not neglect those who have formed its past

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Dec 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786937629

Neville Smith

Neville Smith was born in Leicester in 1931. After university and national service, he trained for the Anglican ministry and was ordained in 1957 by Michael Ramsey—the Archbishop of York at that time. He served ten years in that diocese—five of them as vicar of a moorland parish—before entering hospital chaplaincy, ending his career as chaplain of Guy's Hospital. Guy's stands in the parish of Southwark Cathedral, where he has been an honorary member of the Cathedral clergy since 1990, now with the title of Honorary Minor Canon.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION: ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?

I have enjoyed writing this book. It has given me the opportunity to recall many memories from various stages of my life and to use them as a starting point to reflect on the meaning of old age. Also, given that I have been ordained over sixty years, I have tried to discover a specifically Christian insight into the understanding of old age. This has not proved to be an easy exercise.

The Bible says very little about old age—apart from the patriarchs in the Old Testament, and Elizabeth and Zechariah in the opening chapters of St Luke in the New. All that he tells us is that ‘They were both getting on in years.’ I find it a very pertinent phrase to which I respond and which describes me well; though I am now much older than they must have been when their son, who was to become John the Baptist, was born. From my old-age viewpoint, the New Testament seems to be a book about—or a message primarily for—younger people or those in the prime of life.

At the present time, the Church of England, probably in common with other Churches, seems to share this emphasis in its outlook and activity. Among all the demands made upon it, its prime concern is building for the future. Understandably so. But I would hasten to add that in building for the future, I fear that the Church may be in danger of overlooking the needs of those who have built its past. If this is so, then the Church, or Churches in general, share the same general confusion with regard to older people.

There is no denying the statistics which tell us that we are an ageing population, but no one seems to know what to do about old age or how to respond to the problems of old age. Jamie Oliver has been recorded as saying, We’re getting it wrong with old people. In a later issue of the same magazine, Fern Britton described old age as fit, fun, fantastic—a description rather over the top for many of us. A recent report suggests that taking a walk every day and a nap after lunch will help us to live longer. But another report suggested that although we may be living longer, the quality of people’s lives has not improved significantly. This observation is underlined by a series of reports produced by charities concerned with the welfare of older people.

There are many who experience loneliness and a sense of isolation. I am keenly aware of all these concerns, and have had them very much in mind in writing this book. From my own perspective, in my understanding of the Bible and the Christian faith as a whole, I have tried to make what I hope is a constructive approach to understanding old age; a time of life which, for many people, can be a negative rather than a positive experience.

As these pages will reveal, I am something of a railway enthusiast. I still love the sound of steam, the smell of coal smoke and hot oil, and hearing the carriage wheels going clicketty-clack as they are pulled by an old steam locomotive over the rails of a section of preserved line. We can never re-live the old days with things as they actually were, but the memories are still with us. In railway terms, I would choose to see later life as a refreshment room, for enjoying and making the most of the time we have left, rather than as a waiting room for what inevitably lies ahead.

Helen Keller was born in the United States in 1880. Early in life, she suffered a devastating illness which deprived her of her sight, hearing and speech. With the help of her friend and teacher Anne Sullivan, she was able to overcome her disabilities, and become a social worker, writer and lecturer. There are numerous quotations attributed to her in which she reflects on the meaning of life and people’s approach to life. Perhaps one of her shortest is most appropriate for this book: Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing. She died aged 88 in 1968. In spite of all the difficulties which beset her, she had lived life to the full.

For those of us in later life, life is still—and must be— an adventure as we continue to explore the meaning of increasing years. We reflect on the way we have come, the way that lies ahead still, and the continued understanding and interpretation of our faith. In my quiet moments, and perhaps at times when I am not at my brightest and best and in need of some incentive, I think of those words of Helen Keller. I find in them a source of insight and encouragement. I hope this book will encourage others in the same way. If so, I shall be well satisfied.

DID I EVER TELL YOU…?

Recently, as I write, I attended the annual meeting of an organisation to which I belong. After the business meeting, and a talk by a guest speaker, we moved into an adjoining room for wine and a buffet reception. My back starts to ache if I stand for too long, so I found a chair and sat down with some other people and fell into conversation about the content of the interesting talk we had just heard. Another group of men, probably about my own age, were standing in the corner of the room, just over my right shoulder. Another man approached them. You don’t mind if I join you? he asked, or, more accurately, announced, and proceeded to join in the conversation. Before long, however, I heard those familiar words: Did I ever tell you—, as he launched into a long anecdote about some dealings he had had with the local police station.

This is a situation which I have often witnessed or found myself in. Someone—almost inevitably a man of my own age—approaches me and wants to tell me an anecdote, often about an event from the past—which doesn’t involve me—and in which, I have to confess, I have very little interest. I do my best to be patient, and listen as the story unfolds to its eventual conclusion. But I recognise my own impatience and irritation that someone has, as I feel, imposed themselves upon me and taken up my time in this way.

Later, when my feelings have subsided and I feel more rational, I come to regret my impatience and lack of tolerance. It has done nothing for the other person, and it has done nothing for me. I recognise that the only result is a waste of emotional energy which is draining, and which I could well do without. But the experience also makes me realise how often these days I catch myself beginning a sentence with, I can remember— or, when I am with friends Do you remember—? In other words, whatever I like to think or believe about myself, I have to realise that I am really no different from the other person whom I found so tedious. I need someone to listen to me, just as much as he did—and probably, I am just as tedious.

My first realisation that this might be so, happened when I arrived at the local bus stop one bitterly-cold winter’s morning with snow forecast, when I found myself talking to a young mother as we waited impatiently for the bus to arrive. I told her about the winter of 1963, how cold it was, how much snow there was then and how long it lasted. She seemed less than impressed and not particularly interested. It was only later, when I reflected on this little encounter that I realised why. 1963 was history, long before she or perhaps even her parents were born. Did I ever tell you—? And here I was, doing exactly the same thing. So why, what is it that makes us do this? Why do we want to share our memories with other people, often strangers and unknown to us in this kind of way?

A possible answer arrived unexpectedly and quite by chance. I received a phone call from a member of my extended family. Did I remember anything about a certain fine old house in Leicester, the city where I was born and grew up? The house had been built around 1900 as a ‘gentleman’s residence’ (as such houses were then called) to a standard which reflected the comfort and ample means of the owner and his family. The house had been converted, and was now being used as a social centre where my relative had attended a reception. The present owners were keen to know something of the history of the house, who had lived there, and who had been its previous owners. I recounted a few details which came to my mind on the spur of the moment—the name of the family who had lived there when I was a boy, the occupation of its owner, some details of his family and his connection with ours. I found later that the phone call and the enquiry about the house had stirred all sorts of memories which had long lain forgotten.

I was surprised by how much I could remember, and how clear those memories still were, despite the passage of time, some seventy or more years later. In fact I knew and remembered the house very well. In November 1940, our own house was damaged by a bomb which fell nearby and removed most of the roof. We moved out into a cottage in the depths of the country which was cold and damp, and isolated by heavy snowfalls. I fell ill with pneumonia and our friend with his large ‘gentleman’s residence’ had enough room and was generous enough to allow my mother and me to stay in the house until I had made a full recovery; a period of some weeks. As I got better, I spent some nights sleeping in the basement which had been reinforced as a precaution against air raids. All this made a great impression on me. I knew the house well, so much so that I believe I could still find my way around it today.

All these old memories, which had lain dormant and unvisited for so long, now came flooding back to the surface. I felt a great need to share them with someone but there was no one left with whom I could share them in any meaningful way. I am the last surviving member of my immediate family. To anyone else, my memories have no relevance. They are simply stories from the past, or my past, and probably of little interest to anyone else. Did I ever tell you—? The question persists and refuses to go away. In this I am no different from anyone else of my own age.

Once I had acknowledged and accepted that truth about myself, I was able to empathise with what it is that drives older people (mainly men, I think) to embark on recounting stories from their past, often quite personal and of no more than passing interest, to anyone they can find who appears willing to listen. One reason is to be able to re-live, to savour again, moments from our past, especially when we were younger, that gave us pleasure and made us feel good. Even in retrospect, they still bring with them a sense of warmth and well-being. (We are usually much more reticent about our failures, our sins of omission and commission.) The other and more important reason which leads us, or perhaps even drives us, to want to share our memories as we grow old or older, is the feeling or fear of loneliness.

This is something which is well recognised, both formally and informally. There are many good-hearted people who are concerned for their elderly neighbours, especially those who live alone, and make a point of calling on them regularly and doing whatever they can to offer support and attend to their daily needs. ‘The Big Society,’ so called, was in action, up and running quite informally, long before it became a political slogan.

More formally, Age UK has published a comprehensive review entitled Loneliness and Isolation Evidence Review. It differentiates—or does its best to differentiate—between loneliness and isolation. ‘Isolation’, it says, ‘refers to separation from social or family contact, community involvement, or access to services. Loneliness, by contrast, can be understood as an individual’s personal sense of lacking these things to the extent that they are wanted or needed.’ Recognising the difficulty of a satisfactory definition, the review continues: ‘It is therefore possible to be isolated without being lonely and to be lonely without being isolated.’ Ultimately the review has to admit that ‘There are instances where the distinction is blurred.’ At the end of the review, in spite of its being so comprehensive, one is left with the feeling that in spite of much insight and research, and the involvement of statutory and voluntary services, loneliness and isolation amongst the elderly remains something that cannot be satisfactorily ‘dealt with’ and remains a problem which will not go away.

The reason for this, I suggest, is that loneliness may be part of, and just one aspect of growing older. The ageing process is common to all of us, but we age in different ways and at different rates. It can creep up on us without our really being aware of it, until we discover that our hair has turned grey, or that we have lost a few inches in height, and gained a few inches elsewhere. So it is with loneliness. There are those who have always lived alone, or lived alone for a considerable period of time and have no problems in continuing to do so. There are those whose loneliness is caused by physical or mental frailty in old age and their inability to leave their immediate surroundings and get out and about. Some experience the loneliness of bereavement, the death of a partner of many years’ standing, while others may have been relieved that death has released them from an exhausting or emotionally draining relationship. The list of possibilities and permutations is endless.

The Age UK review suggests that family contacts can do much to alleviate loneliness. This may well be true, but families are often spread far apart, around the UK (or the world) so there are practical difficulties in offering support to ageing parents, grandparents and relatives. When families do manage to meet, there may still be differences, or even difficulties in relationships. I remember one family gathering when the conversation of our children and grandchildren turned in directions that my wife and I found impossible to follow. We simply did not understand what the others were talking about and inevitably we felt excluded. The moment passed without difficulty, but it was just one more reminder that we no longer inhabit the world of our children, let alone grandchildren.

The world has moved on, and now firmly belongs to the electronic age. There are many older people who have taken this in their stride. Equally, I guess, there are many who have not and find themselves disadvantaged in various ways, from the closure of local banks and post offices, to the expectation of official agencies and organisations that everyone will be able to deal with business on-line. The personal service, the ‘someone to talk to face to face’, has been replaced by the faceless computer or the automated message on the telephone. All these are reminders of what we rather glibly call the ‘generation gap’, perhaps to conceal the disturbing truth that they may well be expressions of the loneliness or isolation of old age. Whether isolation or loneliness, I am not quite sure, but it is another reminder of the fact that the world to which I suppose I really belong no longer exists.

Mine was a world which was characterised by the existence of large institutions and the social structure which they engendered. There were the town and city councils with all their various departments, the four big railway companies, the hospitals, the police, and so on. They each employed their own workforce, who wore the peaked cap and distinctive uniform of their employers and so were readily identifiable. There were few women among them, it has to be said, until the outbreak of war in 1939. In some organisations, women who wanted to get married, or even became engaged, had to leave their employment.

My childhood vision of the structure of society was limited to tram conductors, park keepers and tall policemen on bicycles. Most of those great institutions with their own workforce have now long disappeared, and functions that were routinely dealt with in-house are outsourced to a range of different agencies. Perhaps it is only the NHS, and the Church in all its various forms, which still remain as recognisable institutions. But even the Church of England has changed enormously from when I was ordained in 1957.

I served my title (as the expression is—my first curacy) in Thirsk in North Yorkshire. It was the market town for the surrounding villages, and each of those villages had its own incumbent for its parish church. All that has now changed. There, as elsewhere, parishes are joined together in what are often large groups with one full-time priest assisted by a people offering a range of voluntary and/or part-time ministries, both lay and ordained. Between 1980 and 2000, we used the Alternative Services Book for our services, and since then, we have become accustomed to using Common Worship. It is now twenty years since women were first ordained to the priesthood, and now, as I write, 2015 has seen the ordination of the first women bishops. There have been these and many other changes in the life of the Church of England over the years, yet it remains recognisably the same, whereas most, if not all, of the other great institutions are now defunct.

Inevitably, these institutions were often inward-looking and conservative in outlook, yet they had one great asset: there was someone identifiable in charge. A friend of mine who rang to seek a reply to his letter of complaint, was told that the company no longer answered customers’ letters. Similarly, when I was chaplain at Guy’s Hospital, an elderly man came up to me one day to ask where he could park his car. He had had a long drive to get to the hospital, and had taken the precaution of phoning ‘the office’ (as he put it) the previous day to ask if he could park his car, and had been assured that this would be possible. So now, faced with nowhere to park, what was he to do? He was angry about the situation he found himself in through what he felt was no fault of his own, and frustrated with me because I couldn’t come up with any satisfactory solution. Not unreasonably, he demanded to know who was ‘in charge’ so that he could go and register a complaint, but I couldn’t come up with an answer. There was no single person I could think of who was ultimately in charge. Even within the hospital, every function was delegated down to different departments.

The need to speak to someone ‘in charge’ may become more important if we begin to feel less in charge of ourselves and our own lives as we move into our later years and the question of downsizing looms large. Even if we are fit and well for our age, downsizing can be a distressing and traumatic experience. We may well need help, and someone perhaps to ‘take charge’ and help us through it. They may be able to help us take decisions which at our time of life are difficult for us but which realistically have to be made. The process of being uprooted from our homes, separated from treasured possessions which have formed the background and context of our lives for many years, and then transplanted into a new environment, can be traumatic and make us feel very threatened, afraid and lonely.

Someone I knew who moved into sheltered accommodation found it, at least to begin with, very difficult. Not only was there the problem of adjusting to new surroundings but also of relating to a new set of people who were also facing the same sort of questions. Fortunately, with time, the problems were gradually resolved and new relationships were formed. People got to know each other, and were able to talk with one another. Sadly, this is not always possible in residential care, where there may be few people of similar interests and of sound enough mind to converse with, and share thoughts and feelings, ideas and memories. A situation such as that only serves to accentuate the essential loneliness inherent in old age.

Yet a similar situation may prevail in home surroundings. Those living with a partner may find that, because of old age and a failing mental capacity, the other person is no longer able to remember things clearly, even things that the couple shared together. Sadly it is something which may lead to distress and anger for both. It can drive them apart, and each feels isolated and lonely in their own particular way. Similarly, each partner will have memories which belong to a time before their relationship began. If these can still be shared, they can be a source of conversation and mutual interest. On the other hand, if the mental faculties of one partner are failing or have failed, then memories may only serve to increase the feeling of loneliness and isolation. It is an inner kind of loneliness which cannot be easily filled or lifted by visitors, groups or social organisations, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. Our memories are deeply personal. Many date back too long for others to enter in, except as interested spectators. In this sense, we are, and can only be, alone.

But perhaps our families—assuming we have them—are amongst the ‘interested spectators’, and perhaps we owe it to them to tell them something about our personal history: who we are, where we have come from, our backgrounds, our parents and grandparents; where our lives have taken us, what we have achieved, even what we failed to do; recollections of a way of life that has vanished for ever. I was recently looking through a list of history books for children which included titles like A Wartime Childhood and The 1940s House, both part of my life, but now part of history and confined to the history books. Perhaps I should be recording for my family how and where I grew up, the kind of things I did when I was young, and what life was like, at least for me, in those far-off years. So far, we have only been thinking of loneliness in the context of our later years, but it is also present in earlier stages of life. Indeed, it could well be argued that loneliness is part of life as we know it. But what makes loneliness such a significant factor in old age is that we no longer feel we have the inner resources or emotional capacity to deal with it as we would wish, and as we would have had done when we were younger.

At the 2012 London Olympics, the athletes who represented the UK so successfully were all supported by a team of coaches and managers, and the enthusiasm of the crowds. Nevertheless, when they appeared for the event in which they were competing, they were ultimately on their own. Similarly, there are actors who have enjoyed many years of success in the theatre, yet still acknowledge stage fright when the moment comes for them to go out and face the lights and the audience beyond. It is a feeling of aloneness which I recognise within myself