Recommendation for Lily Iona MacKenzie’s Dreaming Myself Into Old Age: One Woman’s Search for Meaning

Old age is an opportunity to experience our own deepest mystery. Life’s distractions preclude tending to this mystery before the prospect of death begins to close all the curtains to the outside world. Mystery literally means “seeing with the eyes closed.” We do this when we sleep, and then we see dreams. Dreams, like our DNA, are unique to us. Truth be known, our dreams are an invitation to explore our uniqueness and become an extraordinary resource for us as we confront the reality and inevitability of death. We do know that every dream is a story—a mystery—but most people have little or no connection to this reality. This is why it is important for something or someone to point us in the direction of our own unique path—a direction that becomes crucial as death approaches. We don’t need instruction. We don’t need lectures. We don’t need admonitions or dogma. What we need are stories that strike us to the core, stories that can open us up to the most important pathway we will ever experience. What can help is to hear stories of someone who has struggled with the same things we struggle with in old age and as death begins to call our name. An exquisite example is Lilly Iona MacKensie’s book, Dreaming Myself into Old Age: One Woman’s Search for Meaning. What I find most compelling about this work is she speaks not with an impersonal, distant voice, but with full-throated revelations of her personal struggles, an inside view that invites connection, that opens one up to her stories, her dreams, her art, in such a way that it becomes a genuine companion to one’s own struggles with old age, dying and death. Read this book now. You will be glad you did.

Russell A. Lockhart, Ph.D.

Author of The Final Interlude: Advancing Age and Life’s End (with Lee Roloff), Psyche Speaks, Words As Eggs