Challenging Geriatric Behaviors

Since our society equates 
happiness with youth, we 
often assume that sorrow,
quiet desperation, and hopelessness 
go hand in hand with getting older. 
They don't. Emotional pain or 
numbness are symptoms of living 
the wrong life, not a long life. (Martha Beck)

Challenging geriatric behaviors? Yes, that is the title of a workshop for which I recently received an invitation. It must be my brain, playing geria-tricks on me, that made me burst out laughing when I read it. Images of a "Lincoln's Challenge" for old folks came to mind (accidentally, but aptly, a teenage client of mine recently called it "Lincoln's Last Chance"): a bunch of elderly people, being shouted at: stop shuffling, stand straight, you're drooling again? Wipe that spittle from your chin…Lincoln's Last Chance…a place where problematic old people, who simply don't want to act young, get one more opportunity before they're shipped off to a nursing home.

I want to make sure you know that I'm not about to make fun of the elderly. Rather I want to talk about changes in me. Changes that are somehow causing me to be more aware of older people, aging, and especially my own aging process.  I know for a fact that my recent divorce, after 22 years of marriage, has a lot to do with this. But other life-changes also are doing their part. My oldest son is now in college. And while he is only an hour away and often comes to visit for part of the weekend, seeing him arrive and leave certainly feels like a new stage in his and our life. His younger brother is in Germany and will be there until at least the end of high-school (2016). And who knows what will happen afterwards. He might just stay in Germany and, in that way, reverse the journey I started 30 years ago in 1984. Only my youngest is still at home. Nine more years before he will go to college.

What I'm most aware of other than these coming of age things are changes in my body. I see the skin on my arms and notice that it is no longer taut. Thousands of tiniest wrinkles have suddenly appeared and act like they're only going to multiply. No amount of lotion will make them go away. Not even to mention the increasing amount of seborrheic keratosis spots. There are the occasional aches in my joints (esp. my left knee, my hip and the ball joint in my thumb). For years already I have been aware of changes in my vision. And, just to make this very clear, bifocals do not fix the problem and they create a slightly embarrassing issue: When I look at someone's face while skyping with them I now have to tilt my head slightly upwards to ensure that I see the person on the other side as clearly as possible. Meanwhile that person seems mostly the underside of my chin, just a bit of my eyes as they peer through the bottom-most half of my glasses. It gets even funnier when both parties are wearing bifocals (as in a recent face-time conversation with my brother-in-law, Michael).

While I always knew that life is finite, that we'll have to let go and die some day, now the piece of life that might be left for me seems even more finite than before. And--time seems to go even faster than before. There is sadness in that. It is undeniable. And I don't want to deny it. I want to embrace it, hold on to it, because somehow this sadness (a feeling I find captured in the Largo of Dvorak's New World Symphony or in YoYo Ma playing Daniel's Oboe from "The Mission") seems like a most precious part of life. This morning I woke up from a dream that had ended with me crying. I woke to the feeling and sound of myself sobbing. It felt like strange territory to be in, but it felt right at the same time. I know that my soul is re-minding me…of life…of letting go…of death.

What I have a much harder time yet embracing is the thought of my children in their old age. Particularly the thought that I won't be around for them anymore (I know it's obvious and, perhaps, my dwelling on this is borne of a kind of I-thought-I-will-live-forever grandiosity),. That they will have to do without their father, feels overwhelming. Of course, I can tell myself that they are strong and will manage. But that doesn't quite capture what I feel. Perhaps it is the inevitable thought that, sooner or later, their lives will end as well…that there simply is no stopping that damned finiteness!

Perhaps this is somewhat similar to what my parents might be feeling about me right now. They're both alive and going strong as far as I know (and as far as they will tell me). But at the same time while they're still interested in my life, partaking in it to some degree, I can also feel a growing sense of distance, a letting go or differentiation that is taking place. Taking in the fullness of their children's lives is simply too much. It can't be done! No parent can do it! And so, we have to let go. Not only our lives are finite, our minds are too. Too small to really comprehend how another person's life really works. Even if it is that of our own children.

And yet . . .

As small and finite as our minds are when it comes to comprehending the fullness of another's life, I strongly feel that we have in our hearts an infinite capacity to love others, in spite of our failure to comprehend them. In fact, it might well be that it is our failure to comprehend another person first opens our hearts to loving them. I further believe that this infinite capacity has room for as many people as we encounter in our life-time.

As I have crossed over into my fifties I have been amazed to notice how this infinite capacity makes itself known within me. I experience it as a deep sense of gratitude for the presence of others. Not just friends, relatives and acquaintances but also strangers, or even people I have never met or seen. I am not alone in this world. That is a fundamentally important thought to me:

                                 I am not alone, even though I love solitude.

In my finiteness as a human being on this earth I am equipped with an infinite capacity to love and connect. Through a gesture, the tone of my voice, a direct look into someone else's eyes, or a sincere question love and regard for the other person comes through. When I open myself to this way of connecting to others the energy that comes out of me feels strong and powerfully stable.

One of the most challenging "geriatric behaviors" I know is that older people get stingy, with money, but especially also with time. We feel strongly that there is not enough time to love. Is it our growing sense of the finiteness of our life that makes us stingy? We often joked about my maternal grandfather, Erich Rauch, that "the last shirt does not have pockets" (i.e., that he would not be able to take his money with him. But perhaps it would be good for us to realize that the last shirt also does not have "time-pockets." We cannot save time to take with us. All we can do, as we live, is to spend time generously. Spending time generously when we know that our resources are finite! That is the true challenge to geriatric behavior. For the time we don't spend with our loved ones--spouses, children, grandchildren, friends, and even strangers--that time that wasn't invested is lost. Those we leave behind when we die cannot inherit the time we didn't spend (with them).