First off, a brilliant essay by Susan Jacoby that illustrates my biggest problems with aging:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31jacoby.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=real%20life%20old&st=cse
Aging is fine, doing it well and gracefully is brilliant; to fight the reality is to not deal with the inevitable and, as Ms Jacoby quotes the first neuroscientist of aging, "the problem is not making 90 the new 50 but 90 a better 90." Age cannot be escaped but aging better, which baby boomers seem to refuse to accept as a possibility, is the ideal.
Anyhow...
This entry is about my 99 year old mother-in-law and the consequence of still being alive; her friend from the old neighbourhood is dying. The neighbour has had severe diabetes for years, she's in her 80s, and her body is breaking down. It is not unusual to be dying, she has lived a long life but my mother-in-law is, yet again, outliving someone for whom she cares. The neighbour has told her husband to not come to the hospital because all she does is sleep and she has refused to let the matriarch visit her. It is terribly sad. And, I think, the matriarch realizes life must end for us all--even her.
Do I wonder about my mother-in-law's death too much? It is a fixation of mine, isn't it? However, just this morning, my mother-in-law told me she would live for a while as long as she stayed away from hospitals. I felt, all of a sudden, she feared death. It has never occurred to me before now.
Perhaps we are all afraid of death; I like to think I am not but then I am not dying nor am I old--yet. Perhaps my thoughts will change as I get closer to the inevitable. Rumi has this great passage in his poems where he describes all movement as a connection to God and I believe that; it makes sense to me. But the matriarch does not pray, at least, not openly. The children, my husband and I say grace before meals and we do the Rosary (kind of weird to quote a Moslem poet alongside Catholic prayers; I could get Rabbi Hillel in too if pushed!) but we do not go to Church anymore; I will not be that kind of hypocrite. I like to think there is comfort of a sort in prayer; but, for the matriarch, I am not so sure. Maybe she does pray when she is alone.
Her friend is dying and that has upset my mother-in-law and when I go into her room with the candies by her bedside and the chips on the table, I want to offer her some sort of comfort. She asks me how I think her friend's husband is doing. I say my child has just made cookies and will bring one up to her.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I really enjoyed the writing of Ms. Jacoby.
ReplyDeleteWhile I read this article it got me thinking of a woman I met at RVH. I was there with my Grandmother (86), she was being x-rayed to ensure her broken hip had mended well. I had seated myself right by the volunteer desk and started chatting with the woman who was working there that day.
She was an older woman that was plain to see but upon first glance she looked younger than my grandmother. I asked her how long she had been volunteering and she said she was honoured just that year for volunteering for 40 years. Impressive to say the least and I told her so. She also mentioned the golf league she was in and a few other activities as well. I said she was busy enough make me tired LOL She laughed and said that she has had to slow down a bit (a little less curling) but that at 93 she was doing pretty good! 93...yup 93.
This was an upbeat, vibrant woman not waiting for death to make its claim. She was engaged. Do I feel she was one of the lucky ones? Yes and no. Yes, in that she choose to engage life, she didn't let a label like her age to define her and her ability to take part. No, because there is nothing lucky about it, she made a choice nothing lucky about that it came down to a simple decision.
Science has presented us with a lot of information about how to fix this and possibly cure that. I have to wonder though how much of what we suffer from is self imposed because that's how it was done before, "This is the story of many generations of woman before me so why would I be any different?".
What connection does the mind and its thoughts have to the body? What gets created in the body as a result of things we don't address, accept or become intolerant to?
Age is yet another label, and if you choose to buy into what that label represents given societal norms than society will fail to do 90 any better than those who came before.
A friend of mine works in a Jewish nursing home in Toronto, one where all of the patients are octogenarians and older. All of these old people are suffering from severe forms of Alzheimer or dementia. However, their long term memories are still in tact. My friend enjoys listening to all of their stories, and has learned much from them about Toronto's Jewish history. One of her female patients, now 90, was -and probable still is- a feminist and in the 60s and 70s was a flamboyant journalist -she interviewed many famous people back in the 60s and 70s. This woman is very well liked and is popular with everyone in the nursing home. Seemingly, her family didn't frown on her choices when she was young, and so neither does the generation below her now making choices for her. This 90 year-old likes to have red, blue, purple and black highlights in the front of her hair and so the hair stylist accommodates her. Choice. Everything comes down to the choice we make. Choices we made for ourselves when we were young, and then choices our family make for us when we are old and not capable of making them for ourselves.
ReplyDelete