He is in his seventies, a filmmaker, teacher, father, and caregiver for his ninety-six-year-old mother. He experienced growing invisibility and a feeling that society had moved on. In therapy he voiced feeling that 'the world's done with me' and was encouraged to put his feelings into words. Composing the personal piece about age and meaning dredged up raw emotions, unprocessed memories, doubts, and losses. A routine eye injection for macular degeneration went badly, causing pain and blurred vision, and he continued trying to finish his work amid physical and emotional distress. The ordeal led to an emotional crisis and psychiatric emergency-room confinement despite no suicidal intent.
What happened began, in a way, with writing. I'm in my seventies, and I've lived a full life as a filmmaker, teacher, father, and now a caregiver for my ninety-six-year-old mother. But as I've gotten older, I've also felt something slipping. A quiet sense that I'm no longer seen. Not with cruelty-just absence. Like the world turned the page and forgot to bring me along.
I began an essay about age, invisibility, and meaning-what it feels like to move through a culture that doesn't always value its elders. I called it The Decline of the Elders, and it became one of the hardest things I've ever written. Each sentence pulled something raw out of me. I wasn't just writing; I was reliving. My mind circled through memories I hadn't fully processed, doubts I hadn't admitted, losses I hadn't grieved. I'd get up, pace, sit down again, write, delete, rewrite.
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