Making the Most of the Third Third: Practical Matters

A couple of months ago I wrote about the short retreat I made with two friends, all of us turning sixty this year and wanting some time and space to ponder the third third of life.  We want to live intentionally, authentically, and prayerfully.

 

Two snippets of encounter since then:

 

Many of the members of my small congregation are elderly ~ six of them in their nineties!  One of my deepest regrets about leaving at this point is that, beyond getting to know them and listen to them and pray with them, I have done little in the way of helping them to live these last years in the way that my friends and I discussed.  They have mostly been forced by health and loss into circumstances neither of their choosing nor their liking, and their resistance is formidable.  I wonder frequently about neglected matters of practical planning ~ and I am experiencing the same thing with my 81-year-old father, who refuses to communicate any preferences for his future life, should he lose his capacity for independent living ~ and I wonder just as frequently about matters of spiritual planning, and about a spirituality that mostly longs for the past and fears death intensely. 

 

Yesterday, in response to some questions I had put to my college students for discussion, two young men expressed their hope that their faith would deepen as they grow older, and one in particular articulated a conviction that old age could be a time of deep spiritual growth.  That's my desire as well ~ for myself, and for my older congregation, and for my young students.

 

And in my own life:

 

My husband, who is sixty-two, would like to retire yesterday and devote himself to the pottery making that has become his new passion over the past year.  (We have a roughshod studio in the basement now, and I am sure that a kiln is wending its way toward our garage.)  Last night, he asked whether I plan to work at least at the pathetic salary I earn now for the next several years, and wondered whether we could live on X dollars a year.  We talked over our debts, our needs, and our hopes ~ we are not extravagant, except with respect to books, but our house needs some major work, and we do want to travel, at least modestly, and we have children who will, presumably, have children ~ and I finally said, "It would be obscene if we could not live on that amount of money."

 

"I think so, too," he said.

 

And so, intentional living commences, in the financial arena, at least.  This is a little scary, and quite different from our last major economic transition  We were married when we were in graduate school (first round), and were in a state of somewhat delighted shock when we both went to work and discovered that, within a matter of months, we could afford a house, and trips that involved hotels rather than campsites, and airfare and dinners out whenever we wanted them.  Ever since then, we have been able to more or less count on being able to earn money in the future and, except for a decade or so when dollars were scarce and kids were plentiful, we have been attentive to retirement saving.   The crises in our lives have not been financial ones.  (Would that they had been.)  Our kitchen is thirty years old, and the third floor bathroom plumbing is mostly original, i.e., approaching the century mark, but the fact that we have a third floor tells you that these are not crises.

 

Nevertheless, it's scary to consider the transition from an income-producing household to a savings-withdrawing household.

 

There is, it seems to me, something deeply spiritual in beginning to recognize and plan for limitation.  Initial limitations with respect to dollars, to the house, to travel, to what we can do for our family.  The limitations that follow will have to do with health and mobility.   

 

Is it not possible that the bracketing of our lives in some ways might lead to their expansion in others?  It's scary, but it's kind of exciting as well.

 

 

 

Pondering the Aging Experience

Most of the people I know in my own age bracket ~ say, 55-65 ~ are moving into that time of life in which our parents are thinking about their final decades, or are already in or beyond the thick of it, with surviving parents needing or no longer able to make care  and end-of-life decisions.

 

My dad is 81, and I'm trying to encourage him to consider the alternatives that might be available to him, should he no longer be able to live on his own or with his partner ~ in his two-story house in the woods, two miles from town.  He tells me that his preference, should he become ill or disabled,  is for a quick death. 

 

Well, yes.  His hope is hardly a unique one. 

 

As one of my friends says, all of those people confusedly wandering the halls of Alzheimer's units did not exactly aspire to that particular destiny.

 

Most of the congregants in my small church are in their seventies and eighties, and several are in their nineties.  I spend much of my pastoral care time visiting with them.  I pepper them with questions about life from 75-95, as I wonder what matters to them now, how they prefer to spend their time, and what they think about where and with whom they live. 

 

With all of the above in mind, as well as the details of the countless stories  that come my way, I suggested to my group of women friends that we gather to discuss some of the things that our parents let slide ~ at least insofar as we know.  We've decided on three topics:

 

Where and how would we like to live if we become unable to live on our own?

 

What are our end-of-life preferences in the event of impending death?

 

What are our wishes for our funerals?

 

Oh, those are uplifting topics, you may be saying. 

 

But I see among the members of my congregation how seldom they are discussed, how stymied adult children are when backed into a corner in which decision-making is required, and how almost no one is able to suggest music or readings for a parent's funeral. 

 

My friends and I, most of us, have known one another for 25 years, and we are going to be counting on each other to take care of these things ~ but we don't know enough about these matters in general, let alone what we think about them.

 

We met this past week to begin to discuss the first question.  We quickly realized that the options seem limitless until they don't, that those of us who still have husbands are not necessarily in agreement with them about where to live as we age, and that money is an enormous factor.   

 

We talked more seriously than we have in the past about what my son calls our "commune" -- our somewhat serious desire to live together, or even nearer to one another than we do now, and hire someone to provide care if we need it, as an alternative to institutional living.

 

We talked over the huge issue of moving either directly in with children, or to assisted living care near them ~ only to have to confront the possibility of another move if those children decide to move elsewhere for new jobs.

 

A couple of us are going to make some visits ~ to a nearby apartment building which caters to the elderly, and is practically on top of shopping and dining possibilities - no driving required, and to one or two of the crème-de-la-crème retirement communities.

 

[Me?  I don't have a great need for independence (as opposed to solitude), I hate to cook, and I have a constant craving for stimulating conversation and engagement, at least at the level of observation, with respect to arts and politics and knowledge in general.  So to me, the retirement community connected with Oberlin College, about an hour away, or the one right here at Case Western and inhabited by many of Cleveland's movers and shakers, sounds ideal.  My husband isn't nearly at interested (i.e., not at all interested), and they are probably both out of our price range anyway.]

 

Our little group didn't get very far, but at least we are talking and asking questions.

Aging - II

I wondered why no one was interested in this post.  Then I discovered I'd not posted it!

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This morning I woke up early ~ a little after 6:00 ~ in the dark ~ after a restless night ~ stretched out in the bed my husband had already vacated ~ registered that yes, this is still my life and Josh is still gone ~ and rolled over to wonder about the process of aging.

To imagine myself twenty years from now, nearly 80.Who will I be, where will I live, and by whom will I be surrounded?

I have my ideal, of course: I will be creakier, but not much, and living in a small cottage by a large body of water.  My husband is likely to be living as well, given the longevity of the men in his family and his own remarkably good health.  In this ideal world of mine, our children will live nearby and their own children will be sunny adolescents who adore their grandma.  Whatever future sorrows lurk in the next two decades will have manifested themselves.  I can only hope for the resilience, dignity and wit of the Countess Dowager.

Dream on, girl.

What if I am, in fact, enduring a multitude of limitations of every kind? What if, God help me, like my own grandmother, I lose most of my ability to see and hear, to follow a conversation and to respond with the appropriate degree of dryness?  What if I can neither read nor listen to books?  What if I am confined to a small room with a linoleum floor, a curtain between my bed and my neighbor's as my sole remnant of privacy, and nothing but a small common garden to serve as a reminder of the great and wild outdoors?

I am pondering all these questions in large part because I spend so much time with older people.  Yesterday's post was but a list; each item thereon frames at least a dozen stories. 

I am pondering all these questions because others are, too;  Diane Roth and Vinita Wright, in particular.

I am pondering all these questions because a friend and her siblings have just had to move their 90-year-old mother to nursing care ~ a most difficult experience all around ~ and because I am trying to convince my father, a decade younger, to make some decisions now about the future.

More on all of the above coming up.

Meanwhile, a story:

I stop by a nursing home to visit an elderly gentleman at the request of his neighbor, one of my parishoners.  He is delightful.  He is from Cleveland and his name, and this is the truth, is Ignatius ~ Iggy.  I ask whether he went to St. Ignatius High School ~ he might have been in the same class with my spiritual director emeritus.  He tells me no; that he went to Benedictine.  "I guess I'll forgive you!" I laugh.

I visit him a few more times. He is longing to get home; although his house seems terribly empty since the death of his wife a few years ago, he wants desperately to see his magnolia tree in bloom.  The spring weather is unseasonably hot and the magnolias are already out; I don't think he's going to make it.

I see him for a last time in the ICU.  He has gone downhill fast and is being moved north, to the Clinic.  I give my number to his son; my church and Iggy's most recent residences are far from my home, but the Clinic is only a few minutes away.

I don't hear from them.  When I return to my church a few days later, I learn that he died in Cleveland.  He will be buried by a priest I never met.

I don't have sentimental ideas about the next life.  I'm not sure that I have any ideas at all.

But I am hoping for a cascade of magnolia blossoms for Iggy.

Aging - I

I'm titling this post "Aging - I" because I have a feeling that there will be some sequels . . .

I spend a lot of time with elderly people.  The ones I call "my" people because they are members of  my church, or friends of my members.

In the past year or so, they have welcomed me into:

a somewhat worn and basic, albeit clean and friendly, nursing home

a much more attractive nursing home

assisted living apartments and their associated nursing and dementia and rehab units

the local hospice facility in the country

the hospice facility on Lake Erie with its spectacular views

intensive care units in three cities

emergency and pre-op rooms

hospital rooms in four cities

a mental health ward in another city

homes all over the place in which people are recovering from all of the above (except hospice, of course).

Two of my people died while I was with them; three others within a couple of days of my last visit.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a new baby and her mom and their four cats.  They're all beautiful and the mom is SO excited about her baby and her family's new life.  I could see that she is already a GREAT mom.

All connected.  More on another day.

Not So Old?

It has recently (finally!) occurred to me that at 57 I might be a bit on the older side when it comes to making major life changes.  Most of my friends are starting to talk about retirement, whereas I'm thinking that if I can just make it past that exegesis exam, then I might be ordained to something somewhere sometime.

My paternal grandmother always longed to travel the world, but was temporarily stymied by my grandfather's refusal to board either a plane or a boat.  She was a resourceful woman, however, and when I was nine and in fourth grade, she took me to Williamsburg VA for a week, inaugurating 25 years of adventure around the globe with grandchildren in tow. 

The next summer, when I was ten, we headed for Yellowstone and the Tetons. I very much wanted to take one of the park ranger-led trail rides, and she didn't want to send me off alone, so she bought a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt and clambered into a horse for the first time in her life.

You might have thought, given the fuss that folks made of her adventure, that she was at least 90 years old.  Last week I realized that she was the age I am now!

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In my efforts to sort through the massive files of papers in this house, I've just found a box of letters I removed from my grandmother's attic a few years ago.  If I have understood my family history correctly, in the space of about two years around 1960 my grandparents each lost a parent and my mother and brother were killed.  This particular box of letters documents that time in the form of condolence letters; those from the nearby Ursuline sisters and from my grandmother's college friends are particularly beautiful.

In one of the letters, one of her friends references a conversation she and my grandmother had had a year earlier.  My grandmother had apparently said, "Do you realize that we only have about 10 productive years of life left?" 

She would have been about 53 when she said that!

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My grandmother lived to be 100.  I don't think she would have chosen the last decade of her life, during which she became almost entirely deaf and blind, but she never lost the use of her considerable intelligence, and she was deeply engaged in our lives into her 90s.

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I suppose that for someone born shortly after 1900, when the average American life expectancy was fifty, the mid-60s did seem OLD.  I feel quite creaky sometimes ~ but not very old.