While young people are usually healthy and full of life, old people experience increasing pain, disease and death. That’s a conventional wisdom, and it’s not wholly wrong. Yet research claims that older people are happier than most age groups, with happiness peaking in our 60s or 70s. We often see people in their 80s and beyond who still live happy lives. Continue reading
Over a year ago I purchased hearing aids.
Several months ago I fell down the bottom three stairs in our house and landed with my back against the wall, chipping the plaster. No injury.
In early October, 2019, my wife and I drove to Maine for vacation. Barbara planned to meet three high school friends in Bar Harbor, and I was hoping to explore Down East Maine, that part of the coast northeast of Bar Harbor. As we entered Maine, I began to shake uncontrollably. After dropping Barbara and reaching Lubec, at the New Brunswick border, I holed up in a motel, alternating between periods of cold shakes and fevers. A few days later when I picked up Barbara, we headed directly home, calling ahead for a doctor’s appointment and postponing a side trip to western New York to visit my oldest brother, Wayne. Continue reading
Our van at Lake Tahoe
My wife, Barbara, and I are living about half a mile from Lake Tahoe in Nevada. We rented a condo for two months this spring to be nearer our son (San Francisco) and to visit three couples (old friends) who live nearby. We worked hard to get ready: repaired the house, tried to clean up the garage, disposed of my motorcycle, tended the lawn after winter, consolidated and rescheduled medical appointments, planned prescription refills, studied the spring weather at Lake Tahoe, and planned a route. Finally we selected clothing, packed our electronics and clothes, loaded the van, locked the house, climbed into the front seats and turned the key. Click, click, click, click—a dead battery, on Sunday. Continue reading
A review of, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Living with Alzheimer’s and Other Dementias, 101 stories, eds. Amy Newmark and Angela Timashenka Geiger, (Cos Cob, CT: Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC, April 2014). Available online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and perhaps your local bookstore.
Photo by Matt, Chicken Soup for the Soul, https://www.flickr.com/photos/dippy_duck/
The editors of this fine book have compiled 101 useful stories of living with dementia. I wish it had been available years ago.
Mary Jane (MJ), my mother-in-law, suffered from dementia for many years. My wife, Barbara, and I aren’t sure when it started; but MJ had been growing less capable, more dependent, since the late 1950s. Continue reading
Sunset on Lake Champlain
Who reads these posts? What’s going on here?
This blog is now two years old and we might take stock of our efforts. Two years ago I expected most readers would be retired. Now it’s clear that many readers are not even close to retirement but instead work serving a senior population.
These guys may be on the table next year
Retirees and others are digesting prolonged economic hardships, and like “Old Love,” it can be hard to spot. Two recent reports from Merrill Lynch pin down what many retirees experience in their own families.
Last week Mr. Donald Keene asked about a couple who can’t afford good institutional care but doesn’t want to force either one into the role of caretaker for a long terminal illness. What are the options for a peaceful end of life experience for both?
Some private homes are ill-suited for sick elderly people.
Old love is marvelous, uncommon and mostly hidden, and it is also socially beneficial. In modern societies old love saves public expense, gives compassionate care, and shows a truly praiseworthy sacrifice.
Photo by Pierre Amerlynck, Belgium
Old love is subtle, hidden and perhaps uncommon, but it is nonetheless a marvelous and beautiful thing that should be celebrated more widely and deeply than it now is. Continue reading
Marcus Tullius Cicero, born into an aristocratic Roman family in 106 BC, was one of Rome’s leading philosophers, lawyers, and orators. At age 62, a year before his brutal death at the hands of Mark Anthony’s minions, he wrote an essay, On Old Age. Written without knowledge of Buddhism, before Christianity, and centuries before modern science, his essay is surprisingly relevant today.
The essay takes the form of a dialogue between two young men and Marcus Cato (Cicero’s alter ego), who was supposedly 84 at the time of the writing. The young men engage Cato with questions. They notice that old age seems not to burden Cato yet to many others it is a hateful weight. So they ask Cato how they might achieve for themselves a graceful old age. They ask particularly if Cato’s large wealth and high position, which are available to only a few, make old age tolerable. Continue reading