Book About Aging Well Hits Home

By Susan Schwartz, The Gazette 

May 24, 2010 

Canada

Driven by a rapidly growing senior population and a "sandwich generation" of baby boomers juggling careers, their own families and caring for their aging parents. 

I remember when my father started to need reading glasses. He was in that place where he knew he really should wear them, but couldn't bring himself to go out and get them quite yet.

I know that place now. Back then, in my late teens, I could no more imagine it than I could having a third eye.

I made fun of him. I'd laugh that his arms weren't long enough for him to be able to read the newspaper or the phone book. Ah, callow youth.

Being the wise person he is, he didn't say "Your time will come." Not that I would have absorbed or understood it if he had. Few at 20 can imagine 50, beyond thinking of it as ancient.

The readiness is all, as Hamlet said. I'm older now than my dad was then.

In my 50s, I no longer think of myself as young. But then, I don't think of my father as old. Ageless, maybe, but not old. That's in part because he doesn't act or think or look especially old, although the calendar might have a different idea. He wakes gamely to the day and works full-time. He and my mother have each other and they laugh a lot.

Sure, he has aches and pains -and less stamina than he used to. But then, I have less stamina than I used to. My knees get creaky. I don't sleep as well as I once did. My world view has darkened. Still, I am grateful every day for my health and think little is more boring than talking about one's ailments -unless it's talking about how we used to have firmer jawlines.

Which is one reason I dove with relish into a fine new book about aging well, the delightfully named You Could Live a Long Time: Are you Ready? (Thomas Allen Publishers, $19.95). Toronto sociologist and writer Lyndsay Green, who is 60, has mined 40 elders, as she calls them, for their wisdom and insight; she canvassed people she knew for names of people over 75 they considered role models. There are well-known Canadians among them, including Warren Allmand, Marion Dewar and Flora MacDonald, and regular folks, too. All, she writes, are living this time of their lives with integrity, courage and grace -and delight at being alive.

The lessons they taught Green "run counter to our society's obsession with staying forever young, and to my own assumption that I must fight aging at all costs," she observed. Rather, she learned from them that aging well depends on "an acceptance, sometimes even an embrace, of the aging process."

She learned from them that it is important to make good friends and keep them. Friends will laugh with us, share adventures and memories. Nurture your friendships, they told Green. Behave with kindness. Be interested in other people. "People who are secure and less self-centred age more easily," she writes.

I don't know that I have done all that I could have with my time until now. But I do know that I am more at ease with the self I am today than I was with the younger me. That augurs well for aging, the elders told Green. They warned that she would have a tough time aging well if she does not know herself -and accept herself.

As one, Gordon, told her: "It is difficult but essential that you do what you do for yourself, and this has nothing to do with what others expect of you."

Aging is a humbling experience, the elders told her, and to age gracefully, we must learn to swallow our pride. Despite our best efforts, they said, "we'll have to face the indignities of diminished capacity, in one form or another." As a friend who had a stroke in her late 40s reminded Green, "You need to remember that you are temporarily able-bodied."

She learned from the elders that while they may be more cautious and move more slowly, it's important to stay active. Virginia, at 85, continues to entertain. "It's true that you can't do as much, and you'll always have something wrong with you, but the advantages are that your idiosyncrasies are overlooked," she said. "My advice is: just keep going."

Give to others, said the elders, most of whom are models of volunteerism and civic engagement. Green cites Confucius: "I sought happiness and happiness eluded me; I turned to service and happiness found me."

When she asked them to identify strengths that help them, nearly all replied that a sense of humour is crucial. Sylvia, 84, told Green that thinking of old age puts her in mind of a sign she saw in a grocery store: "Lost, black & white dog, left ear missing, hind leg broken, tail partly gone, answers to the name of Lucky."

Copyright © Global Action on Aging
Terms of Use  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us