Writers Peta Murray and David Carlin once hatched a plan to matchmake their elderly parents, who lived in the same aged care centre. They imagined Frank and Joan bonding over books, bridge and bocce, perhaps even finding romance. But on introduction, the pair ignored each other and Frank retired to his room. The failed fantasy prompted the duo to confront their own advancing age, determined to make it a time of flowering rather than retreat.
Their new book, How to Dress for Old Age, navigates the emotional labour of caring for elderly parents while asking big questions about identity and meaning. The project was sharpened by the sudden death of a beloved colleague, Adrian, from a heart attack at 58. Murray and Carlin, both self-described late bloomers, are now on a mission to rewrite the scripts for ageing, challenging what they see as unconscious ageism in society.
Carlin, who left his full-time job, rejects the word 'retired', preferring to see himself as a freelance writer and artist. 'I thought, I could become a full-time writer now, and so why don’t I? What am I afraid of?' he said. Murray, 67, believes people hit their primes at different times of life. She completed a PhD on 'elder-flowering', exploring how to activate the elder self creatively, and for her 60th birthday staged My Own Private Mardi Gras, dressing as her alter egos.
The book takes its title from a passage in Murray’s PhD, where she inventoried her wardrobe. She realises that the older she gets, the bigger the wardrobe she needs to dress her inner multitudes. Carlin’s mother, Joan, serves as an example of late blooming: in midlife she enrolled in university courses, worked with NGOs and founded an urban ecology eco village, maintaining a packed schedule of book clubs and bushwalking groups.
Through their work, Murray and Carlin hope to show that ageing can be a period of growth and reinvention, not diminishment. As they sat together in the RMIT office they once shared, they were in sync, both with silver hair and black-rimmed glasses, embodying the very script they are trying to rewrite.
