The gathering darkness

12 Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, 3 in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, 4 and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— 5 they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— 6 before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, 7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Eccl 12:1-7).

Traditionally, this passage is taken to be an allegory of senescence. Some recent commentators challenge that interpretation. However, the set-up in the first verse, with its implicit contrast between youth and the ravages of old age, favors the traditional interpretation. 

Although many of the images clearly lend themselves to figuratively depicting our declining years, some of the images are less transparently illustrative of the aging process. Attempting to locate the analogue is fairly arbitrary. Indeed, that's one reason the traditional interpretation has lately been challenged.

However, this may simply mean the author is not attempting a create a rigid correspondence, but using a variety of metaphors impressionistically to build a general picture. 

Commentators who view this passage as an allegory of senescence try to identify how the metaphors depict different physical aspects of aging, like sensory deprivation or loss of balance. And that's valid as far as it goes.

However, some of the imagery can also allegorize the psychological aspects of senescence. An allegory of senility. If so, this may be the earliest literary record of senile dementia. 

Aging can darken the mind as well as the eyes. Aging can cloud our memories. 

On the one hand, an aging body leads the elderly to withdraw by stages from the physical world. Their field of action contracts over time. At first they may walk around the block. Then walk around their yard. Then they may become housebound, and finally bed-ridden. Their physical world becomes concentrically smaller. From a city, to a city block, to a house, to a bedroom. 

On the other hand, an aging brain leads the elderly to withdraw by stages from the mental world. At first they forget the present. Then they begin to forget the past. Their field of recognition contracts, from friends to family. Eventually, they may forget their own identity. Their psychological world becomes ever smaller. 

If physical decline contracts our access to space, psychological decline contracts our access to time. Increasingly isolated in all dimensions. 

If Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, then this may be an elegy to his father David's atrophy from the mentally and physical vigorous king to the shell of his former self in 1 Kings 1. 

I had a relative who began to lose her mind in her final years. Thankfully, she passed away before the process was complete. It was startling how she could alternate between lucidity and senility. There was often a deceptive normality. Her personality intact. Yet chunks of memory were missing. You didn't know from one hour to the next which person would emerge.  

Sometimes the soul could reroute around the washed out bridges of a deteriorating brain, but other times it was lost–stranded on the wrong side of the riverbank. Habit was all she had to stay centered. Habits of the mind. A daily routine. 

Without God we are all so pitifully vulnerable.