Help!

No reason to party yet, but maybe things are headed in that direction: my parents had their first experience with a paid helper, a young woman who charges a mere $10 per hour (plus mileage, I would hope.)  Gene needed to visit the podiatrist, so she got him there on time, waited, and then took him back home. Cost: $20.

A grocery run, which will take place sometime after the 10^th of this month, may cost about the same. Twenty dollars here or there sounds like a bargain, and I hope my parents agree. For me, the free time is priceless, and for one less grocery trip per month, I can live with the minor pangs of guilt that may visit me for not being the perfect son.

I console myself with the knowledge that twice a month, for the time being, I’ll continue to help with their shopping in person, as well as maintaining the monthly online routine. And if for some reason (a vacation, perhaps?) I’m not available, they now have someone else to call on. On top of that, I still plan to go down for a purely social visit on weekends that I’m not shopping for them.

A childhood friend of mine takes wonderful care of her mother, now almost 90 and living with chronic pain and increasing dementia. Almost every day, my friend (or her adult daughter) picks old mom up, loads her into the car and takes her out to one of her favorite restaurants.  It helps that grandma is the one who pays the bill; in addition, neither my friend nor her daughter is working, so it’s not a big imposition on their time. Hell, if I weren’t working and someone wanted to take me out to lunch every day, I think I could manage.

Without casting aspersions on my friend or her daughter, they both stand to inherit a lot when their matriarch finally dies.  Even a few years in a nursing home wouldn’t diminish the family fortune by much.  The good news here is that that my friends aren’t just after money--they genuinely care for their elderly relation, and enjoy spending time with her.

In my case, however, things are different.  I enjoy the company of my dad, but once every week or so is fine. The tension around money makes me less willing to engage with them; getting my parents to pay for anything beyond the bare necessities is a struggle—and as for some future inheritance, I can predict with confidence that I’ve been effectively disinherited. The fact that there’s relatively little money in the first place makes that knowledge easier to bear. By the time they reach their journey’s end, there could be nothing left apart from their mobile home, which I would frankly prefer go to anyone other than me.

So many families I’ve known fall into bitter dispute over inheritance issues; I’m glad to say my family fell apart years ago, and there’s little more that can go wrong. But I’m an optimist…and could end up very disappointed.

Exercise in futility

Jack Lalanne, before & after

Exercise guru Jack LaLanne didn’t enjoy exercising much—in fact, he hated it—but that never stopped him. He exercised daily, almost obsessively, because he knew it was good for him—that along with a boring whole foods diet.  He lived to age 96, active until nearly the end. 

Experts on aging agree that regular physical activity is an essential part of wellbeing as folks get older. My parents got on board with the message a long time ago and made going to the gym a regular part of their lives until moving up here, where their activity has slowed to an occasional walk.

The good news for people like me, who eschew regular strenuous activity, is that it’s never too late to begin. (Well, almost never; let’s assume that we won’t die before getting started on some kind of regimen.) Former couch potatoes see results in a fairly short time. The benefits of exercise include improved balance, strength—and cognition.  Add to that a few extra years in most cases. All of this is well documented, but I’m still not convinced.

Nothing is required except taking the first steps, and then building a routine you can live with.  I did it back when I was in my 20s, before gradually losing interest; my distaste for the gym environment was part of the issue. Then, just three years ago, I decided to combat middle age spread by engaging in regular brisk walks. I noticed a difference, and may decide to take it to the next level within the next 5 years or so…

Still, at a certain point it all feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  You may take longer to sink into oblivion (and will probably enjoy a slightly smoother voyage), but sink you will—and may even ask if all the time and energy spent exercising might have been put to a higher purpose. And enough people make old bones with little or no exercise for me to believe that genetics trumps behavior.

But for those who can tolerate regular exercise and want compelling evidence of its benefits, check out this short video of Maia, the 95-year-old great aunt of a friend who has kept up her routine for decades (she’s a former dancer, by the way, which probably helped her in building the discipline and stamina she has.) And unlike Jack LaLanne, Maia appears to enjoy her routine, which is less exercise than pure joy in movement. 

http://vimeo.com/31733784

Hell of a week...

Hell comes in many varieties, depending on who you ask.  My own particular version, at least for this week, involved sitting at the table in my parents’ mobile home, while Jeannie yammered about Muslims. Owing partly to her ongoing indoctrination (namely, the “comparative religions” workshop she’s been attending, sponsored by her son’s orthodox church) she’s now taken to regurgitating half-baked tidbits she gathers from the instructor and other group members, sharing them with anyone who’s around.

As my dad worked on his breakfast and I tried to read the paper, Jeannie stood near the table, holding forth on people who believe differently than she does.  

“The more I learn about Muslims, the more I realize how dangerous they are.  It’s terrible!  They want to take over the world, and make everyone live by their rules.” She informed us that Muslim men have a special fondness for “blond American women,” and after they marry and get them pregnant, they then take away the children because women in those countries have no rights.

I object, saying there are plenty of moderate Muslim people who lead ordinary lives and have no interest in taking over the world or marrying blond American women, but Jeannie brushes my point aside. “I know there are some like that, but their religion is all about converting everyone, even by force.”

Then, without transition, she’s on to the topic of atheists. “And an atheist—that’s something I could never be, I just couldn’t imagine.”  She grimaces, shuddering. “They’re denying the spiritual element that’s part of everyone.”

I point out there are plenty of well-adjusted people who are either atheist or agnostic, and who are likely to be happy, highly moral beings. That only goads her to parrot a remark from an old philosophy teacher: “Agnostics are just atheists with no courage.”

Jeannie has always been vocal about her religious beliefs, and can’t imagine someone not worshipping a “higher power” as she does. Her anti-Muslim rants, however, started about 6 months ago, and have only been getting worse.  While I agree that terrorists are evil and need to be stopped, Jeannie seems to feel that nearly all Muslims represent a terrorist threat.  

I could have said other things in response to her tirade, starting with the fact that religion and culture are not always one and the same; oppression against women and minorities happens in many different countries, many of them non-Muslim.

To that I could have added that Christians have their own pretty atrocious history of oppression, including the destruction of whole cultures. How ‘bout them Crusades? And don’t forget the Inquisition.

Or I could have just suggested that, as a good Christian, she should pray for those poor beings rather than judging them.

But as usual, I let it go after my first remark, because even while it would be easy to expose her failure of logic (not to mention lack of compassion) there was no point in trying to enlighten her. Like a dog with a bone, she just wants something to focus on.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for me to sit through her monologues; I have yet to master my dad’s ability to tune her out.  What I could do, if I were so inclined, is to pray for patience and understanding, but I haven’t reached that point yet.

Mona, the Wonder Woman

Now and again, I need to remind myself of the remarkable elders I’ve known. They’re out there, of course, but it’s so much easier to notice the obvious shortcomings of someone like my stepmother, to the point that when I reflect on old people I may not think of the best examples first.

One such person was my father’s late cousin Mona Freye (a fairly distant cousin—her grandmother and my father’s grandmother were sisters.) Mona was a bright star who inspired all who knew her and even those people who only heard about her story.  As this year marks the 100^th anniversary of her birth, Mona’s story deserves to be told again.

Mona on her 92nd birthday with her daughter Shell 

She dropped out of high school when her father died during the Great Depression; needing to support her family, she got a job, while still holding onto the dream of finishing school.  But life interrupted: she had to work; then she got married and raised a daughter in the Oakland area. My dad visited Mona a few times when he was a student at Cal, but after he graduated they lost touch.

Finally, in her 70s, she got her GED and decided to continue on to college—and it was only natural that she’d want to attend UC Berkeley, close to home. It wasn’t easy, but she did it, graduating from Cal in 1994 at the age of 82 with a degree in English. Newspapers everywhere carried the story and she even appeared on David Letterman, where she charmed him and everyone watching. (Interesting sidebar: Letterman and the papers all mentioned that Mona was 78—because she’d lied about her birth date on the entrance application, fearing age discrimination. Eventually she came clean about it with the school .)

Her message, that "It's never too late to come back to school," spread throughout the world and prompted a flood of calls to the campus and letters to Mona, many from older people who decided they could do it too. My father happened to see a news segment about her achievement and got back in touch with her, which is how she and I connected. (I remember my mother’s disdain when I told her the story: “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” she snorted. “What’s the point of getting a degree at her age?”) But my mother was always quick to dismiss anything even slightly unconventional.

Over the next decade, my partner and I became close with Mona and her family, visiting regularly. She never lost interest in the world or in other people, even as her own world became more challenging. I remember enjoying her 90th birthday party with family and friends at a local restaurant where another group was celebrating the birthday of a woman in her 20s. The two birthday girls chatted; the young woman couldn’t believe Mona’s age. “It’s just a number,” Mona told her, laughing.

That was part of Mona’s magic—she never accepted the role of an “old person” with all the limitations that term implies. Like anyone, she had problems and she dealt with them as well as she could. Her final problem, stage 4 lung cancer, she accepted resolutely. “I don’t want any treatment, I just want to die. I want to die.” And so she did, about two weeks after her diagnosis. 94 years is a good life by any measure—but Mona’s would have been a good one no matter what.

and now, a word from our sponsor...

Old people can be so many things—wise or foolish, active or dependent, living or dying…I guess they’re like most other people when it comes down to it. But whatever their personal qualities, there’s one thing we can rely on: the elderly constitute a huge business opportunity, one that will keep growing for some years to come.

A silver tsunami of problems is coming our way, close up and personal: dementia, incontinence, loss of mobility, hearing and vision…all the age-related conditions we can imagine and maybe a few more we haven’t thought of yet.  And right there, ready to handle each problem (while making a big profit) are the businesses that provide goods and services to address every old-age issue.

Unless some of our brightest scientists come up with a miraculous cure for aging, many entrepreneurs stand to make a fortune on high-tech hearing aids and the like, while other enterprises may crash and burn. I’m thinking about those large assisted living communities which are so cost-prohibitive for most people (and will only become more out of reach for our shrinking middle class) that many are bound to fail.

Tied in with the economic realities I see a paradigm shift in the younger-elders, the boomers who want it their way, thank you, and will figure out how to stay in their own homes. In addition to hired caregivers for the most disabled, I envision a wave of intentional communities—middle aged adults moving into the homes of older people, where they will help keep the household running and provide basic help—the elders watching the kids when their parents are unavailable—until the oldest members die off and the caregivers themselves grow old and recruit a new crop of not-quite-old people to help them…a continuing cycle of chosen families…

As typewriters have been replaced by computers and i-phones, so family structures also change. Fewer people will marry and move to the suburbs (a trend already established) while more adults are living together in a variety of relationships.  But as the French say, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

Intentional Community, North Carolina

The idea of people living in the same household, caring for and helping each other—wasn’t it like this before, back in the good old days? Before assisted living and nursing homes, this was what life was supposed to be…and may be again. 

Back to Normal

“Man shoots nail into his own brain” ran the headline. Interesting choice, I thought, but I’m still celebrating my father’s recent milestone—the first newspaper article he’s cut out for me in two years. The story itself is odd (I’d already seen it, to be honest) and I wonder if my dad had any ulterior, if vicarious motive for choosing this particular article as he considers his daily life.

No matter, the simple fact that my father clipped an article is reason to rejoice, even as Jeannie, her post-birthday glow fading, resumes her dissatisfied carping about other people’s failures—particularly  Gene’s. This time, she’s grumbling about his birthday present to her—a gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond—which I helped him choose.

“There was a mix-up with the cards. I wanted a gift card for Macy’s,” she huffed. Then, lowering her voice to a stage whisper, she added, “But he forgot.”

It took a minute for me to understand. “Do you mean you’d asked him to buy you a Macy’s gift card, and he got you this one instead?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “He forgot.”

“Well, blame it on me, since the Bed & Bath card was my idea. Maybe he didn’t remember, but at least he got you a gift. And you did say you might need a new bedspread.”

“Oh, yes, I know.” Moody silence follows.

I had no doubt, though she was keeping her voice low now, that she’d spoken loudly enough to him when she discovered the mistake.  “What’s this!?” I can imagine her saying. “I told you I wanted a Macy’s gift card.”

Here again, I must remind myself that routine and expectations are of paramount importance in most elderly minds. The smallest uncertainty or deviation from the plan sparks an episode of anxiety just short of what someone else might experience right before a plane crash.

I used this incident as an opportunity to mention the idea of having a helper take them on a shopping trip; my stepbrother had already told her about the person he knows who could do that, and her first question was “Does she charge by the hour or by the activity?” Apparently, my stepbrother wasn’t sure, so he said he’d check.

The delaying tactics are endless…meanwhile, does anyone have a nail gun I could borrow? Just kidding...I think.

Party Time

I was hoping that Jeannie’s birthday party, held midweek in their mobile home, would have provided a few choice anecdotes or at least one really awkward moment I could talk about, but no such luck. Given that more than half the attendees were members of the Eastern Orthodox Church the event went surprisingly well.

Martin Luther King and Rodney King both would  have been proud: we really did all get along. It wasn’t mere icy politeness.  When people were introduced to me and my partner, there were warm smiles and casual references to other relatives and their partners.  My stepbrother’s wife asked us why we didn’t get married when we had the chance, and urged us to be more affectionate together as she was snapping a photo. She pointed out that her religious tradition is not one of judgment (like those happy-clappy Evangelicals!) and more about love and celebration. I took that with a grain of salt, but appreciated the thought.

And while I could get catty about some of the appetizers, there were enough decent offerings to let me ignore the weird ones.

Jeannie, queen for a day, was basking in the glow of everyone’s attention.  Being the main attraction, along with the generous gifts and a few drinks, brought out her best qualities: warmth, graciousness and even a certain humility.  She made her appreciation clear to everyone.

Maybe that’s the secret to getting along with people—just address their hidden (even obvious) need by giving them whatever kind of recognition or respect they crave. Of course, carrying out that philosophy all the time would make human beings unbearable—a bunch of perpetual two-year-olds being granted their every wish.

Painful as it is, we need to be thwarted now and then, to learn our place in the world; I just get tired of having to learn the same lesson.