Taking away the car keys
Getting old demands acceptance of necessary losses


When I took my mother's car keys away, she cursed at me. I'd never heard my sweet, churchgoing mom use language like that in my life, but she couldn't accept that at 85, her fading vision, hearing, and memory made her unsafe at any speed. I was reminded of the day Mom followed me to the door, shouting "Give me those #@ $&%! keys back," when Joe Biden spent several weeks insisting against all evidence that he was fit to serve four more years. Giving up the most powerful and prestigious job in the world, obviously, is more painful than losing access to the Camry. But the denial and the anger are fundamentally the same. Getting old, I've found, demands a succession of surrenders. You can accept these losses with some grace and rueful resignation — or go to war with the inevitable. Pro tip: You can't win.
I'm still more than a decade from Biden's stage of life, but if I put on my glasses, I can see the shape of it on the horizon. Behind me, the path is long and littered with losses large and small. Joints worn out from years of running, basketball, softball, and typing take turns complaining, and the mirror reveals a graying old guy I sometimes do not recognize. Too many loved ones and friends are gone. Last year, after 22 years as editor-in-chief of this magazine, I stepped down from full-time work so I could have more time to travel, to enjoy our new home in our new community, to kayak and cycle and walk and play more, to savor the passing days and sunsets over the river. Fortunately, I still get to continue to contribute to this fine magazine. It's worked out as I hoped, but the surrenders continue. The best strategy, it appears, is to accept them and fall back behind a new line of defense, and prepare for the next assault. I know how you feel, Mr. President. When they come for my car keys, I suspect I, too, will curse.
This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.
-
Garsington Opera opens its summer festival with two 'very different productions'
The Week Recommends A 'fabulous' new staging of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Donizetti's fake-love-potion comedy L'elisir d'amore
-
The Rehearsal series two: Nathan Fielder's docu-comedy is 'laugh-out-loud funny'
The Week Recommends Television's 'great illusionist' has turned his attention to commercial airline safety
-
The Ballad of Wallis Island: bittersweet British comedy is a 'delight'
The Week Recommends A reclusive millionaire lures his favourite folk duo to an island for an 'awkward reunion'
-
George Floyd: Did Black Lives Matter fail?
Feature The momentum for change fades as the Black Lives Matter Plaza is scrubbed clean
-
National debt: Why Congress no longer cares
Feature Rising interest rates, tariffs and Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill could sent the national debt soaring
-
Flying into danger
Feature America's air traffic control system is in crisis. Can it be fixed?
-
Time's up: The Democratic gerontocracy
Feature The Democratic party is losing key seats as they refuse to retire aging leaders
-
Frustrated Trump warns 'crazy' Putin
Feature Trump lashes out online after Putin launches his largest missile and drone attack on Ukraine
-
Antisemitism: What a young couple's murder tells us
Feature A Jewish couple was hunted on the street in a hate crime disguised as a political protest
-
The Chagos Islands: Starmer's 'lousy deal'
Talking Point The PM's adherence to 'legalism' has given Mauritius a 'gift from British taxpayers'
-
The Biden cover-up: a 'near-treasonous' conspiracy
Talking Point Using 'Trumpian' tactics, the former president's inner circle maintained a conspiracy of silence around his cognitive and physical decline