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Fending Off Denial about our Dwindling Capabilities
By
Liz Taylor, The Seattle Times
March
20, 2008
We can learn many lessons from watching how other people age — what they do and don't do right, their attitudes, their coping skills. Mainly, aging successfully — or as I say, "deliberately" — takes planning.
A few people are naturally good planners — they're the ones who stock emergency food and water in their garage for the next big earthquake. The rest of us know we should, but an earthquake seems remote.
Well, getting old is as certain a bet as you can make. The only alternative is to die young. Most of us, especially women, will live many years beyond what we expect. The average age of death in America is now about 80, with many living well into their 90s and 100s. The boomers should expect to live at least that long, their children even longer. The fastest-growing population is people 85 and older.
One of the enduring mysteries of my career is the phenomenon of older, fragile people failing to understand the extent of their impairment. Very frail, they say they can go up and down stairs easily, get groceries, take a bath safely. It must be part of our fierce independence as humans to be in such deep denial, yet it leads to many preventable calamities.
Here are some recent examples:
• I took a client to renew his driver's license. Almost unable to walk due to a stroke, he nonetheless thought he could drive. Thankfully, the Department of Licensing turned him down.
• A friend's mother insisted she was perfectly capable of cooking and caring for herself — until her bathrobe caught fire on the stove and she died.
• A 95-year-old man wonders if his daughter can force him to move, when he knows he and his 97-year-old wife are doing fine in their home of 65 years, with lots of stairs. His spidery handwriting betrays his frailty, though I'm sure he doesn't realize it, nor do most people in his situation.
Here's a common scenario: A reader is concerned about her very frail 86-year-old neighbor. She had no children, and the woman's husband died 10 years ago. Her best friend moved away. Her only family, a seldom-seen niece, lives in New York. She has no one with durable power of attorney to make decisions for her when she can no longer communicate. Who will step in to prevent this woman from falling totally apart? There's no one who has her trust or who is trustworthy to help her deal with this stage in her life. She's truly alone — as are many older people.
We live in a country that gives us the right to self-destruct. As long as we're basically competent (all these examples are), we're able to revel in our denial, ignore pleas to accept help and fall to the bottom of the aging abyss, even if it means great suffering and a miserable death.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather not, thank you. I've given up hope that those who are already older and impaired will pay attention. However, I'm concerned about my own future, so I've been thinking a lot about how I can prevent this kind of sad ending for me. Here are some of the basics:
• To the extent I can, I know I have to pay for my care myself. I bought long-term care insurance a decade ago, when my age made the payments reasonable and my health guaranteed my eligibility (it might not today).
• I exercise (though I detest it) and eat healthfully, knowing that exercise and good nutrition are essential to preventing unnecessary disabilities as we age.
• Most of all, I know the importance of relying on friends and family as my "aging buddies" to help me guard against denial. I have no family, so I look to friends, and they look to me, to prevent some of the catastrophes I see happening every day. Community — building relationships with people we trust — is the most essential element of aging deliberately. I'll write more about this in the future.
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