Category: The Aging Journal
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Letting Go with Stories
Stories need to be told. Many of my family stories are embedded in my treasures, such as the candy dish in the last post. I find that sharing stories is an urgent and irresistible need in the lives of many of us seniors. Stories help narrate and sustain our culture,…
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Like a patient etherized upon the table
I fell in love with the T.S. Eliot poem “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” way back as a high school student for the poem’s imagery and rhythm. Who can resist the image of fog as a cat rubbing its back on windowpanes? I treasure the poem even more these…
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The beauty of relationships in transition
Lately, I’ve been pondering on the challenges of living with an ill or dying partner. It’s one thing for a healthy young couple to commit to “in sickness and in health until death do us part” and quite another to live the reality as one partner fades with illness. And…
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De-Cluttering: Stuff or Stories?
Bob and I sat down today for one of those difficult discussions. It’s time (again) to de-clutter and downsize. We already did that ten years ago, when we moved to our senior community but we still brought stuff (like CDs, videos, thousands of 2×2 slides, career memories) to sort “when…
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Police helicoptors, escaped convicts and fear
From our patio, we photographed the police helicopters yesterday. They are here to help locate the escaped and dangerous convicted murderer, hiding about a mile from our home. For the last three days, our senior communities have been in various levels of “Shelter in Place” protocols. All events have been…
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Technology as a travel necessity
Woe are we whose technological skills lag those of our 11-year old grandchildren. Travel is very difficult for those without internet and smart phones and the skills to use them. In the old days, personal travel arrangements were handled by our neighborhood travel office, staffed—usually by women—who knew us and…
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Too old to Travel?
A decade or so ago, I foolishly believed we could chart aging as we did preschool development. As parents, we all knew that those first years of a baby’s development would normally progress from rolling over to crawling to walking, for example. Aging is not so nicely linear. Luck, genetics…
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Fit to Travel?
As our ship neared the Arctic Circle last year on our 46-day cruise, I had an episode of GI bleeding later attributed to strong coffee mixed with strong painkillers and high-acid food.. The ship’s doctor was not happy and explained in gruesome detail how bleeding to death on a cruise…
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Tossing out the fantasies
We first snorkled more than 50 years ago in a sheltered cove in the Virgin Islands and snorkled in the Caribbean on vacations for years after that. My first snorkeling trip, imitating a fish as I floated quietly in tropical ocean waters with reefs just below, was joyous but blurry.…
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Making plans for dementia, just in case
When and how might we—or friends or family—know the time has come to get additional support if we should develop dementia? At what point would moving have been less traumatic for Traci? For Quinn? There are no easy answers, but some pondering and research have led me to these behavioral…
Uncharted Waters 