TOTALLY GEEKED!

It is difficult to find any real empathy for the 51-year-old socialite with kidney failure who, earlier this week, was granted the right to refuse life-saving treatment in the Court of Protection.

For most of us, the four-times married woman’s reasoning that she should be allowed to die after “losing her sparkle” is as shocking as it is selfish.

That she – a “completely indifferent mother” with three daughters, one still a teenager – would refuse the dialysis that would give her a “strong” chance of a full recovery is, as Mr Justice MacDonald stated in his ruling, “unreasonable, illogical or even immoral”.

The woman, identified only as C – an “excessive drinker” who took a drug overdose in September that resulted in acute kidney injuries – did not “want to live in a council flat, be poor or be ugly (which she equates with being old)”, one of her daughters told the court.  

King’s College Hospital NHS Trust, who were responsible for 'C's' care, asked the judge to rule it would be in her best interests if treatment was "imposed"

How on earth could a mother forgo a future in favour of an early death because of her fears of being, as she angrily stated when one of her daughters announced she was pregnant, a grandmother and “past her sell by-date”?

What woman could refuse chemotherapy, as C did last year when diagnosed with breast cancer, in case it affected the way she looked in a bikini? What woman would refuse medication because it made her fat?

A woman who is not only suicidally vain, but also, as the judge this week ruled, legally sane.  

Yet for me, there is something just a little hypocritical in judging too harshly a fiftysomething woman who has taken the words of the most famous anthem of her (and my) generation literally. Fifty years to the day following the release of The Who’s debut album, My Generation, C gave an ironic twist to the line “hope I die before I get old”.

Her case may seem extreme, but those of us born during the baby boom, and now aged between 50 and 69, were the first generation to reject the inevitability of the ageing process.

Worse, as the creators of the “cult of youth”, many of us cannot accept we are growing old. Instead, we constantly push back the frontiers of the previously established milestones of age, using our money (in 2004, UK baby boomers held 80 per cent of the country’s wealth) and our power to make 50 “the new 30” and 60 “the new 40”.  

Jane Gordon has never revealed her exact age to her children. CREDIT: ANDREW CROWLEY

As someone so greatly in denial of ageing that I have been shamelessly fudging my date of birth since my late twenties – to the point where I have stretched the age gap between myself and my older brother beyond belief, and have yet to reveal the exact year to my three children – I for one lack the right to stand in judgement of C.

I might protest that my fear of ageing is very different to that of a woman alleged to have put her looks and her ability to attract men before the welfare of her children. But I cannot deny my fear of being defined as “old”, because the very word is now regarded as infinitely more negative than it was for previous generations.

As a society, we have lost the respect for the elderly we once had. “Dignity” in old age has become synonymous with Dignitas. 

Meanwhile, as medicine enables us to live on even longer, we are confronted with depressing statistics about the illnesses that await, from cancer to dementia, leaving us more afraid than ever of the horrors of our dotage.

Helen Mirren playing the Queen.

Even 70-year-old Helen Mirren, that golden goddess of eternal youth, has admitted that however “great” she believes ageing to be sometimes, “I do wish I were 40 years younger”.

This week, she shocked fans at an awards ceremony by using an expletive about her sex-life, saying she was worried that her role as The Queen would prevent her husband from ever “f******” her again. 

Still, although the average baby boomer doth protest an awful lot about ageing, and worry about lost youth, few of us would totally deny the positive aspects that come with age and maturity.

We are a largely prosperous lot, often living in homes that are way beyond the financial reach of our children’s generation.

We have not had to live through the horrors of war, as our parents’ generation did, and are living longer, healthier lives than has ever been possible. At an age when previous generations were seen as “past it” we have never had it so good.

Helen Mirren, 70, had admitted she sometimes wishes she was 40 years younger.

I might worry about things like putting on weight, going grey and growing a moustache (or even a full beard), but I know these are shallow and essentially useless concerns.

Far more exciting than the very vain hope that I am still attractive to men is the prospect of the arrival of the next generation-but-one to mine.  

When I became a grandmother three years ago, it was not so much a sign I had reached my sell-by date as a new lease of life, and in a role than has infinitely more to recommend it than the full-on burden of parenting a new-born baby. Which is why, in the sad case of C, it is so hard to muster any pity for anyone apart from the three daughters. 

I hope her decision to die puts her in a miniscule minority of My Generation. Like many other artificially blooming boomers, I may attempt to convince myself I will be forever young, but deep down I know it to be self-deception. I, for one, don’t want to die before I get really old.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/50/