The finest one-actor stage performance I have ever seen took place in 1975. That’s when a friend and I went to see “Brief Lives” at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston. The playbill is here in my hands as I write, souvenir of a play that still reverberates in me, twenty-five years later.

The superb British actor Roy Dotrice took the part of the seventeenth century London diarist, John Aubrey. In a marvelous impersonation of that eccentric writer, Dotrice entered into the character of the man and convinced us onlookers that we were witnessing Aubrey himself in his one-room lodging.

“As the first morning light filters through the heavy curtains of John Aubrey’s chamber – which serves him as bedroom, library, kitchen and study – it slowly reveals a dusty, untidy,  and overcrowded room, more like a museum than a private lodging.”  This is the way the director, Patrick Garland, described the set.

The set was so intricately designed that it amounted to another part in the play. The room was incredibly crowded with books, papers, food, furnishings, and tools. One had to wonder how Aubrey, depicted as seventy years old, could ever find anything at all.

In trying to deal with my own stuff, I sometimes feel like John Aubrey. Recently, for instance, it took me weeks to find a bill that I had promised a company as a receipt. But repeated efforts to find the piece of paper had turned up nothing. I was beginning to despair of ever finding  it.

Then one day, looking through a manila folder marked “House: Current,” I suddenly came across the elusive document. As the ancient Greeks would have said: Eureka!  (“I have found it.”) A wave of elation wept over me as I  finally held in hand the elusive piece that had defied weeks of searching.

What gave a final twist to the event was my discovering the document just where it should have been. The whole time it was lurking in the appropriate folder waiting for easy retrieval. How ironic to have failed to look in the very place where good order required the darned thing to be!

From events like this,  most of us will be tempted to draw at least one rash conclusion: only older people lose things and take a long time to find them. It’s just like us elders to spend our time looking for whatever we cannot find.

But did we not all lose things when we were young? I still feel chagrin that the baseball I once owned as an adolescent, given me by my father and adorned with the signatures of  the Red Sox of that era – – Ted Williams, Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr, et al. – – got lost.

We also forget that, by the time of later life, we are likely to have collected an awful lot of stuff. My files are much more numerous and filled with much more material than when I was younger. Also the number of books in my house keeps growing especially since a long-ingrained taboo  forbids me from throwing any of them away.

Many of the countless events and encounters we elders have experienced have left a trail. In my instance, at least, that trail consists mostly of paper. But long after the event there are also many other things – – wedding presents, photographs galore, and knick- knacks picked up on various trips.

And this law of accumulation applies, not merely to external things, but mental realities as well. If we have trouble remembering where we put something, part of it may be that our minds are so lavishly furnished now. The memory of where I put that document competes with thousands of other memories.

Reluctantly, however, I must admit the influence of another reality as well. In later life our short-term memory tends not to be so sharp as when we were young. Dredging up from the murky depths a particular bit of information often takes longer. When trying to recall where I had put that receipt  put my short-term memory to a test it failed to pass.

However, inability to lay my hand on something promptly does not mean that I am “losing it.” Saying so would be jumping to a conclusion without looking at other much more likely explanations.

As admitted above, too much stuff clutters my home office. And I am not as well organized as I need to be. Ideally, I ought to be spending some time each day sorting out what needs to be saved and throwing out everything else. And the material judged worth saving ought to be put into neatly marked files where it can be retrieved in a relatively short time.

One of these days, be warned, I’m going to become super well organized. The ghost of John Aubrey is going to be exorcised from my life. In the meantime, however, please don’t ask me for anything, at least anything you need to receive from me in less than a few weeks.

Richard Griffin

“Gerard was incapable of ‘cutting’ someone he knew, had in this instance known so long; as one grows older the fact of having known someone ‘all one’s life’ becomes more important.”

This is what the late British writer Iris Murdoch says of a leading character in her fascinating novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, a recent selection of my reading group, well-received by all our members. I was struck by the writer’s observation because it accords so well with my own experience and, I suspect, the experience of many other people who have reached a certain age.

Actually, the phrase “becomes more important” strikes me as something of an understatement. For me, friends of long standing have become a vital source marking both continuity and discontinuity in my life.

The two Bobs, Frank, and Jack and I have been close friends since the first year of high school. Though the vicissitudes of life have carried us in different directions, the bonds among us have never snapped. Knowing one another for fifty years has been the source of much value and continues to feed our souls.

That we are all  men, that I do not count among friends of such long standing any women, derives from the exclusively male environment in which I received schooling as an adolescent. More than half a century after its founding, our school still has not admitted girls.

I could discourse here on the virtues of each friend but that might embarrass them. It will suffice to say that each of them has special qualities of personality that have worn well through so many years.

Despite living in the same region, some of us do not see one another very often. But we turn out for major occasions: weddings, parental funerals, retirement celebrations, and other special events. With Jack, I celebrate Christmas Eve and his birthday every year; with one of the Bobs, I have dinner most weeks.

But, even when we do not see each other, we still hold one another close. We share so many formative experiences over which we reminisce and often laugh. Our salad days seem far removed now but some of us are enjoying dessert. Two of us are very late marriers and still have young children to fascinate us. Two others have grandchildren by now whose arrivals give them hope for their family future.

One of the Bobs, by reason of his vocation as priest, lives a celibate life of service to the people of his parish and the church at large. The rest of us look to him for spiritual inspiration, liturgical celebration at joyful times, and support during crises.

Like everybody else, we as a group have had to bear such times. Various bodily ailments continue to test the courage of these friends. The worst affliction has come to the spouse of one of us, a disease mysterious in its origins and devastating in its effects. We friends suffer with this woman whom we have known for decades as we wish her husband strength and wisdom.

I go beyond the Iris Murdoch character Gerald because, not only would I not reject an old friend but I would not criticize him either. The longevity of friendship counts enough with me that a personal statute of limitations has taken effect. Respect and affection for these friends demands that by this point in time I affirm them and cannot feel justified in ever badmouthing  them.

We came from a society much more stable than American society is now. Though no one of us conformed completely to type, we were products of the Greater Boston, Irish-Catholic community. The church loomed very large in our personal development; so did family. Though some of us joined in the rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s, we have never renounced charter membership in the solidly middle class echelon of America.

We all speak the same cultural language, a fact that has made communication among us easy. So far as I know, members of this informal group have never had a personal falling-out or an ongoing dispute. The five of us differ, no doubt, about many subjects but not enough to cause estrangement.

I asked each of my four friends to tell me their feelings about the sweep of personal history that has been ours. The most touching came from Frank who told me: “One of the things that we have been able to do is know one another well enough to wish it would go on forever.”

One of the Bobs calls long friendships “a great consolation to me that there is a significant number of people that I have known all my life; I find it absolutely unique in a  mobile society, that there are people whom  you don’t have to introduce herself  to. With them, you don’t have to start up again.”

Richard Griffin

Mr. L., a divorced father,  says: “I love my children. I just don’t understand them. And I really don’t  know  what’s their problem. It really used to bother me an awful lot that I wasn’t closer to them, and I’ve tried. I really did.  .  . But then I had to come to grips with it, that that’s what it’s gonna be.”

This quotation comes from a study entitled “Older Stepfamilies: Views from the Parental Generation,” done by Barbara Vinick, a veteran researcher affiliated with Boston University.

Dr. Vinick recently told me about her findings and shared much fascinating information. “We sat down and talked with husbands and wives who had been remarried an average of twenty years,” she said. “We asked them to look back on the course of their relationships with their children and their stepchildren.”

Almost half of the older divorced fathers described their relationship with their “ex-children” as “not close.” One-third of these alienated fathers had not had any contact with these children. Another third saw them from time to time, while a final third enjoyed routine contact with them.

Vinick says that the alienated fathers found it sad to have lost contact. She was surprised how much pain and regret they expressed. More of them than she expected were ready to blame themselves for this unhappy situation (whereas younger men, it seems, are more likely to blame their former wives.)

This greater readiness to accept responsibility can be seen as a sign of growing liberation in later life, Vinick believes. “The passage of the years has given them a chance to look back and have some perspective on things, to let go of a lot of their anger.”

She goes further: “As men get older, they are willing to give up some of this macho stance and tap into their nurturing, affiliative self.” These men, aged 57 to 84, often found it too late to do anything about the broken relationships but many would have liked to.

Dynamics are very different for the biological mothers. “For the most part,” Vinick reports, “they maintained very close relationships with their kids.” Only four out of the seventeen women interviewed did not fit this pattern.

Surprisingly often, relationships between mothers and sons were so close as to interfere with the bond between the wife and her second husband. Vinick calls these “triangles” and reports that often the husbands felt left out. “The husbands and sons found themselves pitted against one another with the mother in the middle.”

Because stepmothers are so supportive of their husbands getting back in touch with their children, Vinick calls these women “family carpenters.” Three-fourths of them said they had taken action to bring their husbands closer to the kids.

In some stepmothers this provoked anxiety. One woman told of going to her stepdaughter’s wedding but not before smoking, something she had not done in twenty years. “Some of these situations were very complicated,” says Barbara Vinick.

Not surprisingly, it is easier for children to enter into relationships with stepparents when the kids are already grown up. Teenagers in particular often have a hard time.

The researcher was struck by the difference between men and women in their appraisal of change within the extended family. Women often termed changes “positive” whereas men were more likely to see negative elements.

About possible interventions, Vinick judges that efforts to help men realize that their kids need them would be highly desirable. “There are wonderful models out there for male behavior in the family but they are not the majority. When men are engaged in negative interaction with the family, they tend just to withdraw.”

Men should be encouraged to express their feelings of regret. It’s never too late to reestablish relationships. The older a guy is, the more likely he will be able to express feelings.

At Dr. Vinick’s suggestion, I contacted Bob Chellis and Sandy Adams, who took part in the study. This couple, resident in Wellesley, stressed that things were different, and perhaps easier, for them because their biological children from previous marriages were not close in age and thus never lived under the same roof at the same time.

Nor, despite some difficulties in his relationship with his son, was Bob Chellis ever alienated from his own two children, the way so many other fathers in the study were.

However, during a time of crisis between him and his teenage son, Sandy did exercise the role of family carpenter. Says Bob of this experience, “Sandy was able to pull things together, to be a bridge.”

Pressed to say what she did, Sandy answers “I felt Bob’s son really needed someone to take a stand.” She and Bob took that stand when the son demanded his own way and Sandy ultimately succeeded in winning him over. Nowadays, Bob says, “my son asks his stepmother’s advice and shows affection for her.”

No wonder Barbara Vinick concludes that “stepmothers deserve more credit than they generally receive.”

Richard Griffin

A weekend visit to Chicago brought me into contact with an old man whose life is marked by disorder. He’s a lush, grossly overweight, broke, and a self-deluded lover of young women. Drinking and carousing seem to be his main activities, as well as scheming how to get money by romancing other men’s wives.

The man’s name is Falstaff, as in Sir John Falstaff, the central figure in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera of the same name. That is the work I was privileged to see last week in the Chicago Lyric Opera’s lively production. The spectacle and, especially, the musical themes bid fair to remain in my head for weeks to come.

Bryn Terfel, the much acclaimed Welsh baritone, scored a smashing success in the role, the first time he has sung it. His paunch-led maneuverings as he walked and rolled around the stage provided us, the audience, with constant amusement. As a Hollywood puff might have put it, Terfel was Falstaff.

Inventor of the original Falstaff was, of course, Shakespeare. The playwright placed him in three works – The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the Fourth, Part One and Part Two –  creating one of the greatest comic characters in world literature.

This is the character that Verdi chose for the centerpiece of his last opera. The great Italian composer and hero of his country’s risorgimento was approaching eighty years of age when he completed the work. For decades he had been hoping to write a comic opera but did not find an appropriate subject until his librettist, Arrigo Boito, gave him a clever script built around the famous Shakespearean character.

In this last work, Verdi displayed a genius of invention that had developed with the advance of years. Falstaff, the opera, shows a style radically different from that of his earlier works, and even from the famous operas of his middle period – La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Il Trovatore. The music of his last opera flows seamlessly all through the piece, without the set arias so characteristic of the earlier Verdi.

The plot revolves around Sir John’s efforts to seduce Alice Ford and Meg Page, the charming wives resident in Windsor, and the revenge that these merry women take on the hapless knight. Their first revenge comes when they manage to get the fat man hidden in a basket of laundry and then have their servants empty him out of the basket into the River Thames.

The second retaliation comes in the last act when the Windsor wives terrorize Falstaff in a forest that they have peopled with their many friends disguised as evil spirits of the night. Sir John is tricked out his wits and becomes scared for his life.

Falstaff, though constantly presented as old, hardly serves as a all-purpose model for old age. Over and over he succeeds in making a fool of himself. His plans to take advantage of other people for his own advantage blow up in his face. Rollicking always, he manages to amuse us but always at his own expense.

One quality he does have, however, is resilience. He falls down often, both literally and figuratively, but just as often he pulls himself up. Yes, he is a buffoon but ultimately a loveable buffoon. Even when he indulges in that unloveliest of emotions, self-pity, he shows forth a humanity that is endearing. Spirit keeps triumphing even over that great mound of flesh that is old Jack.

Old age, most of us have discovered on entering upon it, is not neat. Like Sir John, we can be tricked more or less easily. Despite our alleged growth in wisdom, we can find ourselves acting like fools. At times, we may even have to live with a nagging sense of things falling apart.

Why are our lives so often untractable? Should they not by this point have become more ordered, harmonious, consistent, and peaceful? Perhaps the young man Shakespeare knew better; almost surely the old man Verdi knew the awful truth.

The older we get, the more we can remain a puzzle to ourselves. Yes, on occasion we seem to achieve growth in self-knowledge, yet our hold on it stays slippery. There remains an element of the tragic in our lives that can get us all down. Inevitably, life in our dark moments sometimes seems not worth the effort.

But the comic side of it all also counts. If we miss seeing this, we miss much of the meaning of being human. At the opera’s end, Falstaff joins his playful tormentors and sings “Tutto nel mondo è burla”  (Everything in the world’s a jest). As one commentator says, “If you picture old Giuseppe Verdi slipping on the costume of Falstaff – belly, red nose, and all – you will comprehend the composer’s view at the end of his years of what life really means.”

Richard Griffin