Old Age is Not for Sissies

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Special to United Methodist Insight | Nov. 5, 2025

“Growing old is not for sissies,” is a comment often heard as seniors like me gather over coffee with aging friends.

The phrase was popularized by actress Bette Davis, who actually said, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.”  She is said to have had a pillow with the saying embroidered on it. I would paint that on the side of the barn if I still had a barn.

The philosopher-preacher of Ecclesiastes warns, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them…’  because all must go to their eternal home…”

The psalmist concedes, “The days of our life are seventy years    or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;even then their span is only toil and trouble;    they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

It is the “toil and trouble,” the aches and pains, the grief and depression that sometimes cause despair in old age. Acceptance of the often painful realities of the human condition come slowly for most of us. Life can be hard and barely bearable sometimes.

After his wife, Mary Jane, died in February, Joseph Anthony Naumann, retired adjunct professor of Geography at the University of Missouri-St. Louis wrote, “I lost all desire to live – I no longer live; I just exist.”

I asked Joseph, who calls himself “a retired Episcopalian progressive Christian,” for permission to share his reflections on old age here, because his experience with pain, depression and grief are common.

Joseph said, “Having two bone-on-bone knees for more than 15 years adds to the depression because it limits my mobility or ability to stand for more than 5 minutes. There are so many things that I can’t do that I formerly could do. I can’t mulch around my two big oak trees, the eight azalea bushes in front of the house, or the eighteen English boxwood hedges along our southern property line… Thirty years ago, I mulched and cared for more than 150 rose bushes.

“Objectively, I know I’ve been blessed and have no real reason to feel like I’ve been cheated.

“I feel Mary Jane’s presence with me as I write this. It’s a paradox. Feeling her with me comforts me, but I feel intense pain because I miss being able to hold her and talk with her. She was so intelligent and well informed on so many subjects that talking with her was always fun and fulfilling for sixty three years

“In my 83 years, I’ve been blessed with a long, wonderful marriage and a long career in education. Now, I’m disconnected from both and feel quite lonely. My primary care physician put me back on antidepressants and I’ve had two video chats with a new psychiatrist… The antidepressants have helped somewhat – they can’t bring the love of my life back.”

Joseph is finding support in his faith and in his relationships with friends at church. He concludes his musings with what he calls “the positives:”“I’m reconnecting with psychiatric help. And every Tuesday, I go to St.Barnabas Church to get free, day-old Panera bread items. I have a cupof coffee and visit for about an hour.”M. Scott Peck wrote in his bestselling book, “The Road Less Traveled By:”

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth… once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult ―once we truly understand and accept it― then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Nathan Nettleton is pastor of the South Yara Community Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia. In a sermon last week titled, “The Need to Lament,” based on the prophet Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations, he said,  “a healthy response to pain and suffering begins with entering fully into it, allowing ourselves to feel the terrifying depths of it, and to weep freely and give voice to all the feelings that it awakens in us, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.”

Nettleton added, “…learning to lament, learning to feel and express the depths of our grief, takes us so much closer to the heart of God.”

After more than three decades with Parkinson’s disease, “Back to the Future” actor Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed in 1991, at age 29, is, at the age of 64, coming to terms with his condition. Fox knows more than most about what it means to come “closer to the heart of God.”

Fox told how the loss of motor control has taken a toll over the years.  “It’s absolutely incredible the stuff I broke,” Fox said. “In a three-year period I broke my elbow, I broke my hand, I got a big infection in my hand and I almost lost my finger.”

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Fox said, “I’d like to just not wake up one day. That’d be really cool. I don’t want it to be dramatic. I don’t want to trip over furniture, smash my head.”

But Fox is keeping on, like he always has. "I just feel I have to," he told USA Today. "It's a tradeoff. I want to be around for everything.

"I want to be active at everything, keep working, keep my partnerships going, my good friends, and enjoy my time with my family," he added.

Janelle Ash of Fox News wrote, “Throughout much of his acting career, Fox has found ways to work around his symptoms. Now, he’s landed his first role where he doesn’t have to worry about the disease. The star is set to return to the screen, after five years in retirement, with his most personal role yet in the upcoming season of ‘Shrinking.’"

The psalmist concludes in his meditation on old age, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” 

As I approach my 75th birthday in February, I find the counting more difficult. My father died at 80, my grandfathers at 56 and 67, my brother at 67, too.

I reflect on this each time I go to the clinic to see Kaitlin, the nurse practitioner who is our primary care provider, and to the chiropractor’s, and the urologist’s, and the dermatologist, and the cardiologist, and the neurologist’s, and the physical therapist’s, and the dentist’s, and the optometrist’s, and to see Drew, my clinical nutritionist, whose supplements are helping to restore my body after a long battle with chronic disease.

This is not hyperbole. This has been my life the past few years, as I know it is for many of you who will read this lament. I can carry on ad nauseam  about all the tests I have had to endure: X-rays, blood and hair analysis, CT scans, electrocardiograms, echocardiograms, ultrasounds, and the dreaded colonoscopy. The onerous prep is the worst part.

Then there was cataract surgery, three root canals, and cryotherapy for a precancerous lesion on my nose.

And I am recovering from Lyme Disease, which began after a tick bite on the farm in 2013. The disease forced me to retire two years early, and, along with the mold illness that followed, caused us to give up the fully remodeled 100-year-old farmhouse, along with our beautiful red barn and the land we loved. That was heartbreaking, but the worst part was the physical and emotional suffering that followed.

There was a period of four years when I could not drive the car, could not go to church, or to the store, or visit the homes of most family members and friends, because of the severe mold allergy. The pain in my head and the brain fog was so excruciating that somedays I prayed for death. Yes, this pastor, dedicated follower of Jesus, and person of deep faith, experienced suicide ideation, thoughts about how to take my own life.

I had counseled people who were contemplating suicide but had never thought it could happen to me. I will never forget what my late friend, Rev. Wes Corbin, said at the funeral of a colleague who died by suicide: “We are all more vulnerable than we know.”

I held on because I could never imagine doing that to my loved ones, and, I think, because God guided me to the people I needed to help me heal.  I learned to hold on from a grandmother who, despite great suffering and many sorrows in her life, lived to be 105. Grandma’s motto was “keep on keeping on,” repeated after every good-bye hug.

I read in the Lyme Facebook groups, almost every week, of someone who, like me, during that terrible time of indescribable pain, has given up hope. It is estimated there are 1,200 or more suicides in the United States annually by persons with Lyme or associated diseases.

I give thanks to God everyday now, as I drive to the grocery store, and play with my grandchildren, and sit with my wife in the pew at church, that the debilitating pain that afflicted my life for so long is mostly gone. I can preach and tell stories again. I experience joy and laugh every day. But I know there will come a time when I will have to let go of all that I love in this world, and do the ultimate trust fall into the waiting arms of the Eternal One.

Meanwhile, I will cling to the promise of God’s enduring care that is found throughout the scriptures. I like Eugene Peterson’s translation of God’s promise in Isaiah 46: 4:

"And I'll keep on carrying you when you're old. I'll be there, bearing you when you're old and gray. I've done it and will keep on doing it, carrying you on my back, saving you.”

Someone said, “Don’t worry about old age; it doesn’t last that long.” Perhaps I should put that on the side of the barn.

The Rev John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles.” Email johnsuwalt@gmail.com,