‘…Eldership – it’s not a word we use. That’s why we want to do a project about it, because we are not sure what it means; because it is connected to age but is not defined by it; because we do not know how to grow old well, to have a relationship to loss, an open, authentic, vulnerable relationship to not being here. I weep every birthday, not because I do not want to be a year older, but because it is a moment to acknowledge that I do not know where I came from, and where I will be, if I will be, when I am not here anymore….

We found during our two weeks that an elder has a different relationship to time than the one we mostly have, the one that is scared to waste it, that races against it, that counts it out and mourns its passing. In making a show about eldership we realised that we were not in the business of show business, not razzmatazz, neither fast drum rolls, nor a period drama of slow nostalgia. What then?

I am thinking of Rosie, lying full stretch on the floor, while Aldona wraps white tissue paper around her, resonant of different images: preserving a body; wrapping a gift; parcelling up fragile china teacups so that they do not break when carried from one home to another. Then slowly, slowly Rosie pulls herself out, as if emerging from a cocoon, leaving the tissue, itself fragile, behind. A snake skin. A ghost. A white shadow.’

Extract taken from

www.improbable.co.uk/portfolios/the-eldership-project/

By Matilda Leyser.