Composing a Further Life

anymore. At first people would get sick and die within weeks, and they don’t do that now.” We spoke briefly about the “AIDS cocktail” and the progress that has been made in making it possible to live with the virus much longer, but only at the cost of taking strong drugs that are ultimately hard on the body.
    Michael has retired from the National Park Service but gets called on for short-term consulting work in historic preservation, so both Michael and Dan have occasional paid work that follows an unpredictable pattern. Although they do not live in an overtly gay neighborhood, like the Castro in San Francisco, they socialize primarily with gay and lesbian friends and are thoughtful about the problems of isolation that others face and the ways in which aging affects members of their community.
    As I think about Dan and Michael, my mind goes back to his onetime ambition, to live “somewhere in the west with a partner, … in a house with a garden and a fishpond and fruit trees.” Dan has adapted and readapted to circumstances; he has not achieved the standard labels of success, but all in all he has an enviable and even admirable life. And he’s kept his sense of humor.

CHAPTER VIII
A Time for Wholeness

    T HERE IS A STORY told of St. Thomas Aquinas that one day after years of labor he returned from Mass, simply stopped working on his
Summa Theologica
, and never resumed. When his assistant, Reginald, urged him to continue, he is said to have replied, “I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.” 1 “Mere chaff” was the translation I first heard.
    Religious orientations, like other forms of human engagement, seem to take different forms at different stages of the life cycle, as ardor ebbs and flows or as time becomes more or less available for reflection. One of the most common versions of this pattern suggests a turning toward things of the spirit in later life, which does not necessarily mean toward formal religion and may or may not be valued by the community. Hinduism, for instance, affirms that after a man has passed through the stages of the student and the householder, he may withdraw from society to meditate and live as an ascetic or join India’s mendicant holy men or
saddhus
. In the Islamic tradition, which calls for a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, this pilgrimage is often taken in late middle age, after which the returning
hajji
, deeply moved by the experience, is more devout and regular in his prayers.
    The theme of spirituality in later adulthood is not limited to cultures with a belief in some form of afterlife or reincarnation, nor is it limited to individuals close to death. Rather, this deferral suggests that, during the first three decades of adulthood and child rearing, a preoccupation with material affairs is appropriate and to be expected, a long haul of necessary practicality before the period when “your old men shall dream dreams,” but after “your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28), even as the adults of the society maintain its necessary rituals and institutions. It may also reflect cognitive changes, such as a wider and more inclusive perspective, greater tolerance for ambiguity, and even biological changes, such as decreased hormonal activity and greater congruence between male and female. Institutional or doctrinal concerns that once seemed important may become less so, while contemplation becomes more central. This story about St. Thomas Aquinas is especially interesting because it is the story not of someone converted in later life, like St. Augustine, but of someone suddenly drawn deeper into an earlier commitment. Such a story tests the notion of a through line in a given life story with an apparently abrupt shift; yet on examination one can see at least as much continuity as discontinuity.
    In 2007 I was at a Lindisfarne conference held at a Zen Buddhist monastery, the home of the Prajna Mountain Buddhist Order in New Mexico, when I was approached by Jane Fonda, who has a home near Santa Fe. She told me that she wanted to interview me for a book she was writing on aging, and I laughed and said that I, too, was writing a book on aging, so perhaps we should interview each other. I find it interesting that, whereas I tend to use the life cycle metaphor of Erik Erikson, Fonda uses a theatrical metaphor, speaking of her years in movies and anti–Vietnam war activism as her