My vacation in elder land

(No. 146) Before the time comes, pack well for the trip.

Proper spelling is the first thing to go.

This month, I’ve experienced other people’s aging in dramatic ways. Two weeks ago, the roughly 90 year old mother of someone close to me died, and I attended her funeral at a lovely Midwestern cemetery. The next day, I helped in a small way to clean out the apartment in the assisted living center she’d moved into a few years ago. Last week, I spent a few days trying to help an 88 year old woman figure out how much care she needs, given that she lives alone in an old farmhouse, and is having trouble walking. Oh, and in the middle of all this, I turned 66, which is a birthday that kind of precludes ever again saying that one is “middle-aged.” I’ll probably start calling myself early-elderly, from now on. LOL, but not so funny. Like most of my jokes.

The assisted living center where the first woman lived was a very nice, clean place. But when we hauled stuff out of her apartment, I couldn’t help but wonder if this made all the other residents a little anxious, because, clearly, they faced the same fate in the next few years, if not days or hours. I admired that this woman had chosen — with some prodding from her family — to move to a place that would care for her, appropriately, as her condition worsened, all the while trying to give her as much independence and volition as she could handle. Yet I was acutely aware that everyone in this well-lit building had moved here to die.

It was clear from my visit a week later with the 88 year old that she would do anything to avoid such a move. She has geriatric pets, who fawn over her and bark for help when she falls, a small town fire department that will come pick her up if she pushes the Life Alert button hanging around her neck. She would have such a hard time leaving the pets with anyone else, and the little community down the road is important to her. She has lived in this house for close to 50 years, and the flowers that rise in the spring and the bears that occasionally cross the rear yard are essential to her serene sense of self. While she has enough money to pay for in-house care, she hesitates to bring people in. They will disrupt her mood and autonomy. Her plans for her future seem to depend on the willpower and good fortune that have almost always been in her life. I’m hoping that will be enough, but, given her physical difficulties, I have my doubts.

I was fortunate that both of my parents were well cared for by their spouses, my step parents. Yet, long before my parents died I was involved in the care of several of my great aunts — five sisters born at the turn of the 20th century, only one of whom had children. None of them went to nursing homes (the only option available in those years). They either stayed in their houses until the final weeks, attended to by friends and neighbors and occasional visits from nephews, or teamed up with their sisters to get through the difficult times.

What I witnessed with them, and again in the last few weeks of geriatric visits, has led me to think about the difficult years I might face in what now seems like a less distant future. I have three wonderful kids who I’m sure would take me in. But I don’t want that. I would like to take care of myself. I have decided that when I am 75, I will familiarize myself with different caregiving places where I might be comfortable were something bad to happen before I died (ETA: my 90s). I don’t plan on needing help. I plan to die quickly while reading a wonderful novel under the pale blue light of a beach umbrella. Yet, I realize that sometimes wishes do not come true. So I will consider what I might need in my final years, and what I will want, and I will let my kids know, so they don’t have to figure everything out. People like me are telling the truth when they say they don’t want to be a burden.

Meanwhile, I will hope to be strong until the end. To further that, I did a grueling TRX workout at the gym today, and also walked five miles. I avoided sugar and refined carbs. I didn’t meditate, but I prayed. I got sun in my eyes. I ate a lot of fiber and some fermented foods to fuel that ever more popular concept, the gut biome. I talked with friends. I’m sure I missed actions I could take to keep fit and healthy into the weaker years. But I’m doing my best. And you can too. I know my efforts to ensure that I’m healthy when I’m old(er) sound a little boring and perhaps neurotic and morbid. But today I read a startling quote from a notorious writer named Buzz Bissinger, who is famous for cross dressing in absurdly high-priced leather clothing. Writing about how much he hates our culture’s insistence on “wellness,” he said, “At age 69, all the exercise I get is from chewing,” and I felt a little sick for him, and all the other people who, facing aging, willfully ignore what can help them, favoring bluster and magical thinking instead.

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