MARY IS A VERY OLD FRIEND She’s 84

FRIENDSHIP GROUPS TEND TO BE MADE UP OF PEOPLE OF THE SAME AGE WHO SHARE SIMILAR LIFESTYLES. BUT WHAT IF ONE OF YOUR CLOSEST ALLIES HAD AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE? WHEN 28-YEAR-OLD ABIGAIL BERGSTROM MET A NEW BFF WHO WAS THREE TIMES HER AGE, IT OPE

When I arrive at her flat, Mary usually has a small, crumpled pile of notes waiting for me. Sometimes it’s a few of her favourite lines from the book she’s reading; other times it’s a leaflet for an exhibition or a newspaper article she thinks I’ll find funny. ‘Here you go’ – she passes me the first one. This time it’s a cartoon. I look down at a drawing of two people, sat alone at a dining table laid out for a big dinner party. It reads: ‘We have to accept – online people aren’t our real friends.’ I look up and she’s grinning, then we both laugh.

Mary is one of my most valued friends. She’s wise, incredibly creative and – unlike every other friendship in my life – our relationship exists solely offline. She’s read more books than anyone I know, is a member at my favourite art gallery, and always has ginger biscuits in the cupboard. Perfect friend material. We do all the usual things friends do: we see each other every week and talk about our lives, we go to concerts and dinners together; in fact, mine and Mary’s friendship is average in a lot of ways. The only thing that might stand out is Mary is three times my age.

It’s fair to say it’s not the norm for someone in their twenties to hang out with somebody in their eighties. But after signing up to a befriending scheme with Age UK in an attempt to broaden my perspective and be a less selfish human being, we were paired up. And although shared interests and similar postcodes do not a match make, Mary and I got lucky. We’re fortunate to be friends because, in many ways, we are very different. When Mary was a single, working woman in the Forties, there was no disposable income for microdermabrasion, matcha lattes and yoga retreats (I promise I’m not as big a cliche as I sound). She gave her wages straight to her mother because her father was too sick to work. Mary didn’t concern herself with promotions, dating apps or the form of her downward dog. Her youth was set against the backdrop of the Second World War. There was no time for self-indulgence: she was too busy hiding under the stairs with her sisters during air raids.

My generation seems far more self-centred than Mary’s. We live in a society obsessed with youth, beauty and staying young. We shy away from getting old and spend a lot of money trying to put it off. Old age isn’t aspirational. Silicon Valley’s guiding force is ‘Transhumanism’, an intellectual movement using technology to eradicate the ageing process as a cause of death. We’re obsessed with our individualism and freedom, but hanging out with Mary has given me a glimpse into a future of physical vulnerability, loss of independence and alienation from technological advances, which has clipped my millennial wings.

But there does seem to be a slow shift in the way old age is perceived. Simone Rocha’s AW17 show was applauded for including models in their seventies, and Lauren Hutton, 73, was recently named one of the stars of Calvin Klein’s lingerie campaign. The Turner Prize, traditionally a celebration of the art world’s enfants terribles, has also scrapped its age limit. At the Women’s March, some of the most-shared placards were the ones held up by an older generation: ‘I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit!’ and ‘Same shit, different decade’. For me, Iris Apfel and her unwavering style is the epitome of graceful aging. Then there’s Baddie Winkle, the outrageously dressed 88-year-old Instagrammer with 3m followers, proving that internet fame is not a millennial-only playground.

When I asked Mary how she felt about these ‘poster girls’ of old age, she referred to them as tokenistic: ‘It’s all very well admiring them from afar on the internet, especially when they mirror what the youth want from old age: to stay cool and have a modern perspective. But that’s not the reality. I bet if you saw Baddie Winkle in the supermarket, you’d feel differently about her.’

Mary is right. We need to change the lens through which we’re viewing this older generation of women, and we need to close the gap that’s separating them from us. Perhaps we could start by using the oldest trick in the book – by making a new, inter-generational friend.

Mary can offer support in a way that women my own age sometimes can’t. My dad recently had a brain aneurism and passed away. Mary lost a friend at a similar time and, although we didn’t talk about our grief in detail, there was a mutual understanding. Here was a woman who understood loss more than anyone in my life; a woman who had lost a mother, a father, a husband, a sister and a son. I recently had my heart sorely broken – hence the yoga – and Mary’s advice was: ‘Having one man who is going to be marvellous cannot be the aim, otherwise you’ll be incredibly disappointed with your life.’ She was so certain, speaking from years of experience. It made me feel safe.

I spoke to psychologist Sue Firth, who sees real benefit in inter-generational friendships: ‘A younger person will expect an older person to see life differently and to be very different, but while technology has had a huge influence on our lives, not a lot changes in terms of life skills. How to cope with rejection, disappointment, failure and, particularly, loss – these are all things an elderly person will have experienced a lot in their life, and they can offer young people help and support.’

This is definitely the case with Mary. She was in her sixties when her husband died, at which point she decided to go to art school. However, she was told she couldn’t apply because she didn’t have any GCSEs, so Mary went back to school and got the necessary qualifications. And she regularly goes to events on her own, even though it’s a struggle. She reminds me not to give up; to be more independent. There are women all over the country like Mary. They’re not on catwalks, starring in Netflix documentaries or appearing on our Instagram feeds. They’re sitting at home, being ignored.

Last week, instead of crumpled newspaper cuttings, Mary gave me a linocut print she’d made. It was of two women running in a wheel. The woman at the forefront of the image appeared youthful and strong. Underneath her, on the inside of the wheel, another woman was almost ghostly. Mary told me it represented the cycle of human change and how we tread the paths of women who’ve come before us. There was a beautiful synchronicity to it. Symbolising the inevitable separation and time that keeps us on opposing sides of the wheel, it was also a reminder of how incredible it is when Mary and I find common ground and a 60-year age gap drops away. I’m grateful we’re friends and that the path she led will echo in my own. I only hope that one day I’ll have this exchange with another woman much younger than myself.

To find out more about Age UK’s befriending service, see ageuk.org.uk