Dick Van Dyke has opened up about the sadness of old age, revealing that while he insists on maintaining joy and his health, he feels “diminished” both “physically and socially”.
The 99-year-old Mary Poppins star, who turns 100 on 13 December, admitted that “every single one of my dearest lifelong friends is gone, which feels just as lonely as it sounds”.
Writing in a health diary for The Times, Van Dyke – whose extensive credits also include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the long-running mystery series Diagnosis: Murder – credited much of his survival to his wife Arlene, who is aged 54.
“Without question, our ongoing romance is the most important reason I have not withered away into a hermetic grouch,” Van Dyke wrote. “Arlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two thirds and three quarters my age, which is still saying a lot.”
Despite his positivity, Van Dyke also wrote that due to feeling “diminished”, he is unable to travel extensively, and has been forced to turn down invitations to attend events, as well as work offers, in places outside of his home in California. “That kind of travel takes so much out of me that I have to say no,” he wrote.
Van Dyke, who has previously voiced his disdain for Donald Trump and the current Republican administration, additionally added that the state of the planet “could turn anyone sour and dark – young and old”.
He continued: “I just lived through two Southern California wildfires in less than a month, right out my front door, including the worst one in history. Daily, I spiral into anguish over the mayhem and cruelty being inflicted on the entire world by those in power. So yes, I suppose at certain times of day I am the grumpy old man who yells at the TV.”
He did, however, offer that these occasional bouts of sadness and anger are not “the essence” of him, adding that he likes to keep fit, dance and spread positivity wherever he goes.
“For the vast majority of my years,” he wrote, “I have been in what I can only describe as a full-on bear hug with the experience of living. Being alive has been doing life not like a job but rather like a giant playground.”
Last year, the actor declared that he isn’t afraid of dying, while acknowledging that he could “go any day now”.
