Three weeks or so ago, I had that old familiar bitter-sweet pang of regret. Not really serious – and it never lasts very long. Nor does it happen often. Perhaps once every six or eight years.

It’s not exactly real pain. Just a sense of melancholy. A thought of what might have been.

West Side Story

The trigger for this regret was our first trip to a movie in two years. And what a fabulous choice – the remake of West Side Story.

To avoid crowds, we went at 10.00 a.m. on a Monday morning before Christmas. We figured everybody would be busy with last minute work or shopping.

We were right. Only 10 people in the whole theatre. It felt safe.

And it is brilliant. I loved the original movie, especially the beginning where the apparently random lines slowly morph into New York City. No one who has lived in New York could watch that without a warm glow inside.

But this one surpassed that movie in almost every way. Both the singing and dancing were brilliant. So full of verve. So full of feeling.

And it used the City of New York with true originality. If I may offer one spoiler, it even went to the Cloisters, that completely improbable spot at the northern tip of Manhattan that seems to be straight out of medieval France.

We walked out in that spirit of excitement that a good movie can engender, especially one full of Leonard Bernstein’s music.

Plus, in my case, that pang of regret.

Dancing school

What few people know, even many of my friends, is that I once wanted to be a dancer.

My parents sent me to dancing school from the age of four until I was nine, when we moved from Washington, D.C to New York. I was taught to master the five ballet positions and much else about dancing that I have long forgotten.

Most of all, I learned to enjoy the feeling of movement in my body and the joy of working with a rhythm. Even as a child, it made me feel very alive.

I was well trained by the age of nine.

My lost career

Although I always loved ballet, I don’t think that is where my dreams took me.

As soon as I saw all those musicals developed in the 1950s, that is where my heart lay. The King and I, Oklahoma, South Pacific and even Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Many others. I had the records and knew the songs off by heart.

I belonged in them.

Unfortunately – or, in hindsight, fortunately – my life took another turn.

I never had dancing lessons again. I was so busy acclimatising to all the changes that a move at that age entails that I didn’t even ask about them for about six months. When I did, my mother said that the dancing teacher had told her my body was stiff and I could never be very good.

(Much later, I was told by a dancer friend that being stiff is something any devoted dancer can overcome with a bit of work. No reason to stop a career. But by then, it was way too late.)

I moved on, I was good at schoolwork and found many new interests. I did a degree, then another and eventually ended up with a PhD.

I spent my life using my brain – researching and writing. It has been a good life; I have loved what I did and still do.

I rarely stop and think about that lost dancing career. And when I do, I think of all the physical pain involved, all the difficult rehearsals and, if successful, the demands of travel which necessarily impinge drastically on family responsibilities.

And, like the little boy who wants to be a footballer, I need to remind myself that the probability of my ever making a success of such a career was very, very small. I would never have made it to the big screen.

The regret

Yes, the regret is extremely rare. It is a fantasy that I am much too practical to contemplate very often.

But once in a while, when I see a movie like West Side Story, I want to say, “Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be in there, dancing like there is no tomorrow.”

This was first published on SixtyandMe.com.

I like being old. At nearly 80, I think I am allowed to say so. Indeed, I like being old so much that I wrote a book about it.

But that doesn’t mean that everything about being old is wonderful.

Far from it.

And one of the things I like least is the loss of friends.

Phone bills

Roughly 20 years ago, I was chatting to a very reflective female friend of my parents, living in the same retirement community and aged 96.

My father had just died, and I noted that I had run up a large phone bill talking to his friends about the event, as well as phoning home to talk to my family.

She said anyone should consider themselves lucky to have a high phone bill. At her time of life, her phone bills were very low, because she had so few friends left to talk to.

Interestingly, that small detail brought home the point very vividly.

Friends gone

Clearly, one of the very sad aspects of growing older is the slowly mounting deaths among friends.

Each and every loss diminishes our lives a little bit more. These may be old friends we have known from childhood or someone who we just met, but had connected with and held high hopes for a lasting friendship.

I guess it is just down to luck as to whether you have lost a lot of friends over your life or just a few. I have been relatively lucky in this respect, but nonetheless, they do add up.

What somehow surprises me is how many varying circumstances there are.

You might think a death is a death is a death.

But that is not how it is. Indeed, each one seems surprisingly different.

A death from AIDS

There is the death of my friend who had been living with AIDS since I met him, about whom I have written before. He was very young and that made it especially poignant.

He would sit in my kitchen and talk about all manner of things, but more than once he just looked at me and said, “It’s not so much to ask, I just want my life.”

And he was right. At 30, you should have a life to look forward to.

An old friend from college

Perhaps my greatest loss was of a friend from college, who I had known for over 50 years. We had seen each other through various early boyfriends, then marriage, then children and eventually grandchildren.

She was a very deep person, perhaps not surprisingly as she was a therapist, and rarely did ‘small talk’.

We once met for lunch when we had not seen each other for five years. I went to her office, she put on her coat and walking up the road, immediately launched into a discussion of her worries about one of her daughters.

None of the usual “how was your flight?” which I always find boring. Who cares about my flight!?

She died from lung cancer, having lived a long time in its wake.

The conductor of my choir

People often feel a sense of kinship with the conductor of their choir (or orchestra). You see them frequently for rehearsals – often over many years – and music brings its own intimacy.

I had been singing with his choir for roughly 25 years. And he had a wonderful twinkle in his eye.

In addition, the man had been very helpful to my son, and we had become friends. We socialised together with our respective spouses. I had helped him out when his wife died of cancer.

He had TB, contracted when, as a young man, he helped a homeless man find a shelter for the night. As such, he would have undoubtedly been a likely candidate for Covid-19.

But he was already going downhill in his mid-70s and increasingly needed help with his breathing. He died before Covid was on the horizon.

Much of the choir could not sing certain music without tears in their eyes.

A fellow writer

And there are the sudden unexpected deaths. I had a writer friend, to whom I wasn’t very close, but we enjoyed each other’s company.

He lived alone, had many friends and learned about a year or so ago that he had an inoperable brain tumour and would not live for more than a few weeks.

I can just envisage him wondering what to do. His solution – surprising at the time, but actually very sensitive and sensible – was to post a notice to this effect on his Facebook page.

He also said “thank you” to all his friends. This gave everyone an opportunity to write kind or thoughtful words to him while he was still alive, while I am sure his closest friends rallied around.

The loss of friends

One by one, they drop out of your life.

You want to tell them something, but they are not there to hear. Or you want their advice, but they are not there to give it.

I want them all back.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was first published on SixtyandMe.com