If you are lucky you get old

"I was married for thirty years. I loved my wife very much. If she hadn't died, we would be still together. After her death I was devastated. The thing I regret most in life is that I didn't become an astronaut and never went into space. When I was eight, I dressed up for the first time as a girl. When dressing up, I feel I am transforming from a caterpillar into a butterfly. Sometimes I go out like that. If people don't like it, it's their problem." (Dennis, 76) Dennis' story is one of five stories of the project 'If you are lucky you get old'. You can see the full project on my website http://freyanajade.com/stories/ ‘If you are lucky, you get old’. This was one of the first things the elderly taught me when I set off to find out more about them. In my surroundings and every day life old people hardly seemed to exist. I couldn’t feel their presence although I knew that they were somewhere there. What actually happened to the times when the old were the wise and taught the young about life? In the project ‘If you are lucky, you get old’, I tell stories of the elderly I met and spent time with. To my surprise, the old were not just proud of their age and the fact that they made it that far in life, they were also still falling in love and breaking up. They were overcoming their lifetime partner’s death, living out their erotic fantasies or dealing with the loss of their sexual desire. Talking to them showed that inner growth is ever lasting, and that humans even above the age of seventy continue to love, suffer, long, dream and have sexual feelings.