Unimaginable

When I was in second grade, I couldn’t imagine ever being as old as Teresa DiNapoli, my 17-year-old babysitter. She wore eyeliner, went on dates, and snuck out to the backyard to smoke Parliaments while I sat cross-legged in front of cartoons. Seventeen was too many birthdays away to count. Then, of course, I turned 17 myself. Alas, mascara-less and dateless—but yes, I snuck cigarettes.

That’s how it goes, doesn’t it? We can't imagine ourselves growing older—until we do. And even then, the next age always feels like a cliff we fear falling off. In college, I thought 30 was truly old. As in “don’t trust anyone over 30” old. Boring. Settled. And then I was 30—and that wasn’t me. But the 40-year-olds? Surely they were calcifying. And 60? That was ancient. Sixty-five was when, weathered and beaten down, creaky and curmudgeonly (or, alternately, sweet and grandmotherly) we would spend our days complaining about ailments, tending African violets and baking cookies.

And 90? Ninety was unimaginable. Or worse—it was something we would imagine with dread. Walkers. Incontinence. Frailty. Loneliness. A mind slowly fading. A life we’d been taught was hardly worth living. That's ageism—not just in the culture at large, but inside us, deeply internalized.

And then—here comes Willie Nelson.

He turned 92 last month. I saw him in concert last weekend, and he is why I’m thinking about what “old” means. Not the calendar version, but the lived one.

What I want to say about Willie Nelson is not, “Wow, look at this old guy still going!” I do not want to breathlessly marvel at his age, as if it’s the most interesting thing about him. Because that kind of “amazement” is just a subtler form of ageism. It assumes he’s the rare exception to the rule that older people are both pitiable and irrelevant.

But he’s not an exception. He’s a reminder that the rule is wrong.

What I saw when I saw Willie on that stage was the ease and grace of someone who has spent eight decades making music—and who seems, still, to be finding joy in it. He wasn’t pretending he wasn’t 92. He wasn’t fighting time. He just showed up: astute, grounded, generous, fully present. Still on the road, still in the music, still—yep—having fun.

He was probably high (“California sober” is what it’s called.). But he was deeply there. Not trying to replay youth, not trapped in nostalgia. Just real.

His presence wasn’t a spectacle. (An odd thing to say, I know, because the Outlaw Music Festival is, in fact, a spectacle.) But I think of his performance, his presence on stage, as an invitation to see what a life lived in full can look like. Even, and especially, in its final chapter. He was embracing it, celebrating it and, although this seems contradictory, taking it in stride.

Toward the end of his set, he sang this:

I’m the last leaf on the tree
The autumn took the rest
But they won’t take me
’Cause I’m the last leaf on the tree.

I’ll be here through eternity, if you wanna know how long
If they cut down this tree, I’ll show up in a song.

And you know he will.

Maybe now, or listening to him years from now, he can help us envision something better. Not just about aging, but about the future versions of ourselves we should neither either fear or nor dare to imagine.

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