Not Too Old to Dream, Thanks to a Song about a Kiss

When I grow too old to dream,
I’ll have you to remember.
When I grow too old to dream,
your love will live in my heart.

So, kiss me, my sweet,

and so let us part.
And when I grow too old to dream,
that kiss will live in my heart.

 I lost a dear love during my mid-twenties. In the middle of grieving, I felt grumpy about my age back then. Mid-twenties, I thought, was much too young to become a widow; I think it is an age when we think we own the world, or can save the world, or sit on top of the world.

When I could hold my love in my arms, and we would listen to Vera Lynn cooing, “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” I heard some sweet lyrics sung by a woman with a lovely voice. Beam back to the present, thirty years later, I hear the lyrics that reflect what I feel today.

The lyrics, I read in Wikipedia, were written by good ol’ Oscar Hammerstein II back in 1934, in between World Wars I and II, when Vera Lynn began her career. Lynn made the song significant during Great Britain’s struggles as she uplifted the spirits of civilians and soldiers.

Lynn was in her twenties when the Second World War started, and there she was, she owned the world, she stood on top of it, she saved it with her remarkable voice. She remained on top of the world, in fact, when at age 92, her collection, We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn, became the number one ranked album in the UK.

Not that I get all teary-eyed when I listen to the song these days, though I have on occasion wiped a tear from my cheeks when I sing it; the thing is that as one grows older, memories become a kind of hope to hold on to; and we hold on to them gently, lest we squeeze them to pieces.

In our older age, we recognize the timelessness of Hammerstein’s lyrics, the hope that lingers in us as we sing, “when” we grow “too old,” an age that we will not reach while the kiss of one’s love lives in our hearts.

Lynn, in her nineties, had not grown too old to dream, and certainly neither have I in my fifties. While in our mid-twenties we might believe in some things, in an older age, while we know we cannot own or save the world, we know that we can dream about it, we can dream about standing on top of it, all thanks to the memory of a kiss.