Today we had a funeral at the nursing home.  The resident who died was a 90 year-old African-American woman whom everyone at the Residence knew, a gentle woman. Often when a resident dies, the wake or "viewing" takes place on-site in a room that is large, carpeted and appropriately furnished.  However, today, the viewing was short, in the chapel, followed by a funeral service. As her friends and relatives made their way to the chapel, various staff and others escorted them to the second floor. Because the residence is circular with windows and windows and windows, we could look up from our desks and see the mourners coming into the building. It was during this time that one of the staff, a man of some years but with more life than most people, came into my office and said, "Do you know what really gets to me?"  My eyes must have widened, because I didn't know what to expect...He continued, nodding towards the window where guests were still entering the building, "If you want to see people who know how to dress, you have to look at African Americans!"  I had noticed the very appropriate and almost formal attire of those arriving for the funeral, and said, "You are absolutely right!"  My colleague continued, "I have a friend who is very wealthy and he used to be the best looking, best-dressed guy.  And do you know, that man showed up for his father's wake in jeans and a tee shirt!"  I shook my head in disbelief.  But I had my own counter-story. I said, "Well, we're losing our collective marbles. In my neighborhood, joggers have taken over an area intended for people to sit and relax. Many of the jocks run in shorts, without shirts, huffing and puffing, their sweaty bods exposed down to their navel for all to observe.  Now, really, do people want I to sit in a place where smelly runners with their ears plugged are running in front of your face?  But civility and decorum have disappeared.  Next they'll run wearing only jock straps, and that will be just fine - "Whatever!" as they say.   I say, "The barbarians are at the gates!! Find someone who cares enough to hold them back." (Not likely)

On a recent beautiful summer morning, I visited a Pond near me to see if the ducks were still floating there.  Instead of the six or seven tiny newborns I'd seen in late Spring, I found thirteen sturdy-looking, self-confident ducklings.  They all looked alike.  I asked the man cleaning the Pond how to tell the males from the females and he told me to look at their beaks and their tail tips.  The beaks of the males are lighter, etc., and, at four months old, they are still developing.  When full grown, the male ducks sport gorgeous colors, while the females remain a variegated brown color.  I don't know why six or seven baby ducks have now become thirteen almost full-size fowl.  Something must attract them to the Pond.  One clue is the sign that says, "Please do not feed the ducks", something bystanders surreptitiously do anyway.  The Pond keeper told me that if the ducks are fed at the Pond, they won't leave to find the food waiting for them in Nature.  In other words, they come to expect  complacently  that people will throw food their way.  Not a good thing.  These ducklings need to grow up and face the world out there, just like people.

I guess everyone is on vacation this summer, and that is why so few blogs have been posted recently.  I have held off for a couple of reasons (1) embarrassment that my blogs seem to be the only ones showing up lately, and (2) loneliness because I feel has though I have been talking to myself in these blogs.  Anyway, here I go again spouting ideas to the wind.......Cleaning off my coffee table (how often do you do that?) I picked up a January 2010 (yes, I said January) copy of The New York Times insert called Education Times.  It had an article about how older adults learn.  Bottom line, what it says is not new - because training and adult education is a field I went to graduate school for - but, there are some points that jumped out: 

1. With longevity increasing, middle age now stretches from the 40s to the late 60s (who knew?)
2. Despite all the hoopla in print about deteriorating mental capacity as one ages, our brains "continue to develop"   through and beyond our sixties.
3. Our learning becomes less facts-and-information (tell that to our media and technology geeks) and more  "association" with what we already know
4. The brain "is plastic and continues to change...allowing for "greater complexity and deeper understanding " of information that is already stored in it. (therefore, "association")
5. The best way the brain develops in later years is to "bump up" agains multiple viewpoints that challenge our assumptions (well, isn't that what education is about anyway?)
6. Get out of our comfort zone, don't always hang around those people or ideas we already agree with (or know about)
7. Challenge our own "ingrained perceptions" (everything? eeks!)
8. "As adults we have all those brain pathways built up and we need to look at our (own) insights critically." (Jack Mezirow, Columbia Teachers College)

Does that mean I have to start taking Generation X seriously, for example? (Now there's a challenge.)  However, one major theme in the article is this: don't worry about facts (or names) you can't remember; books you've forgotten you read; movies you've forgotten you saw, distractedness, missplaced keys, etc.  Just keep "scrambling your cognitive egg"  with new ideas and look for "disorienting dilemmas...(that help) you critically reflect" on your assumptions.  I think we used to call that wisdom.

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Sometimes I think that we live day-to-day in a dense fog.  Then, once in awhile, something happens to clear the air and we see clearly. The air got cleaner for me today when I learned that the person with whom  I am sharing a garden this summer has a diagnosis of  "terminal" Cancer. (I learned long ago that the word "terminal" should be crossed out when talking about an illness. The better adjective is "life-threatening".  The truth is that no one (doctors) really knows outcomes for sure. They only predict, like soothsayers of old, except now it is Science, not the Spirits, that they invoke.)

It is unusual for someone to discuss his illness as openly as my neighbor does. Though I have spent significant time with the dying, his conversation drew me up short once again. He lifted my curtain of fog, and I realized with a start that what is happening today  in my life must be lived now , and not postponed for an uncertain future.  Reality is now, not next week, or next month, and anyone who postpones living vividly today, who waits to live more fully in some vague 'future', is truly in a "terminal" condition.  My neighbor, from what he said, lives very much in the now.

 

 

I still buy (only) the Sunday New York Times, though I don't know why.  I guess my addiction has not been completely broken, but I suspect a complete cure may be near. (I would not want to miss the occasional full-length feature which one cannot anticipate - like today's about Haitians living in tents on a road divider where constant fumes and fast moving traffic surround them. It helps put life in perspective. Another several-page story appeared recently about a quadriplegic 22-year-old American veteran of the war in Afghanistan that stays in one's mind for a long time.) 

Anyway, today's paper has an article discussing older adults who feel they must still ape the youthful behavior of younger generations (Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, etcetera, and lesser known 'sky-diving grandmas')  The article refers to "our obsession with health and longevity" as an extension of the Puritan ethic, i.e., "If I work hard and am a good person and am middle class, I will die a good (late in life) death."  Americans "tend to measure (successful aging) in terms of how active people are."

The article quotes a gerontologist  who says, "It wouldn't do...harm to reinstate some value to contemplation...Part of the pressure on older people to be successful and give back and volunteer and be active and play tennis is that we are a culture of doing. We really don't know how to be...that's stigmatized."

As I sat in the park early this morning meditating and working my water color drawings, I thought, "Activism in this culture is only getting worse."  Cyclists whizzed by me, joggers and runners thump-thumped past me (breathing heavily at my back).  When I went out to the sidewalk, children (and some adults) were on scooters. I saw (double) buggies and more bicycles. It seems that we have become so dependent on our copy-cat gadget attachments that, without them, we fear being arrested in public for nakedness.  So, no, I don't plan to try Mt. Everest any time soon, but a good start would be for 30 to 40-year-olds to start focusing inwards a little, (which might be called deep-water "thinking") beyond the whizz-whizz and thump-thump that also creates their illusion of being alive.

Tuesday morning, intending to go to a meeting on Senior Activism, I found that the location had been changed and that I was in the wrong place – at least the wrong place for that meeting.  Instead, since it was a beautiful first summer morning and still cool, I wandered around a few blocks of the Lower East Side, enjoying the relative quiet of a neighborhood that was still half asleep and observing the signs of “gentrification” and night club life as I overheard resident talking in Spanish on the sidewalk. Small eateries and cafes as well as bodegas and specialty retail stores create an unusual kind of neighborhood. (Someone offered me a book about New York City recently that described  it as becoming a Theme Park City.  Not so, yet, on the Lower East Side.) .With a couple of hours I hadn’t planned on, I looked for a place to have coffee and read the book I carry with me for subway/bus rides. A few false tries (No, I wasn’t interested in watching the World Cup) and then I saw a small cafe on East 1st Street that offered seating on the street, shade, and coffee for $1.  Inside, a few Ivy League-looking types (unemployed?) sat at small tables with their laptops – a sign said Free WiFi.  

The service was courteous, attentive and wonderful – something you can’t always count on in New York.  I went outside to the front shade with my coffee and pain au chocolat and opened my book, every so often soaking up the cool breeze as it passed through the nearby trees.  I watched deliveries being made, men hosing down the sidewalk, a passerby singing aloud to himself a song about joy and pain.  I saw a man with long disheveled blond hair come out of a building across the street. He was wearing red checkered, ankle high sneakers. It was 11 a.m. and he probably just got up.  The “feel” of the neighborhood was like another country: Costa Rica, perhaps.  The calm was conspicuous in the normal frenzy that is New York. Each time the breeze came through, I marveled at how little it can take to enjoy life in the moment. Then the sun moved into my space.  It got hot and I left. 

Medicare Part D.  I hate the process of enrollment every year when we have umpteen plans to decipher, each representing some lobbyist who broke the legs of certain politicians.  Yes, the "mafia" is everywhere, and especially in the health insurance industry in this county.  I hate the fact that my Medicare Part D insurer is a California company that set up shop (got an address) in New York State to cash in on some of the lucrative Medicare Part D business.  I hate the politicians who created Medicare Part D, and promoted it as a benefit for elders, but  it is really a boon for private insurance companies who then contribute to re-election campaigns. I hate the nasty unsigned letters these greedy companies send if a monthly payment does not arrive on time.  So. they are going to close the donut hole  - in ten years or so, as it turns out.  BIG DEAL.  Everything about the Senior Prescription Drug Plan needs to change, beginning by ALLOWING MEDICARE TO NEGOTIATE DRUG PRICES WITH PHARMACEUTICAL companies, or allowing the purchase of prescription drugs from Canada.  Americans pay much more for certain popular medications than do any other people in the world.  If one wants to see corrupt politics in action, just start with Medicare Part D.

I have been trying to assist an 86-year-old woman who has about five major issues to resolve, and she is relentless.   Sometimes after 30 minutes or so on the phone with her, I have to end the conversation as politely as I can, hang up and just hold my head to get my brain waves back to normal.  Her insistence can wear me down, and yet I say, Bravo -don't let the b----ds get you down.

Trouble is, that kind of feistiness can look like a certain kind of craziness....at least in a world where lying low is the modus operandi of mainstream survival.   (Unfortunately, not everyone is James Joyce who can turn craziness into an art form!  Art rarely comes from a mainstream kind of mind.)

Yes, this woman was/is an artist.  But her unflagging belief in herself is truly remarkable.  For example, she has a problem with the landlord where she has lived for almost 60 years -he wants her OUT, but she will not yield and insists that he is a dishonest piece of humanity.  She keeps fighting. 

She was in a long term care facility twice, each time as the result of a different medical calamity.  The facilities would only let her leave if she was returning to a "safe" environment.  As an artist, she would be returning to an environment full (wall-to-wall) of potential hazards.  She agreed to stay temporarily elsewhere and, using her cane, goes each day, in the heat of summer, to "clean out" her space so that she can  live there again.  She seems not to be making much progress, and  basic repairs have to be made by the dishonest piece of humanity that is her landlord.  Will he make them?  She keeps going.

She has applied for SCRIE, the rent program, and is missing some documentation.  She thinks she knows where it is and will try to find it in the radical disorder that is her life.  Fear not, is her reaction

The bank closed her account because of an irregularity with a check, so she no longer has a bank.  The closing may have been accelerated by the fact that they (the bank manager) didn't want to deal with her anymore.   She is looking for a lawyer.

Her Verizon telephone doesn't  always work, she says, and she constantly gets automated voice messages in response to the many places she calls that are supposed to provide help with her problems.

Her financial resources are minimal.

She occasionally falls back on her bed in exhaustion, but only to rise again and continue the fight of daily living.  I think she is a marvel and, sometimes, when I am facing a hassle, I think of her.  Bravo. 

 

Maybe we older adults should adopt the motto "Think, Then Call or Write".  I spoke to an 87-year-old woman recently who is very lonely and quite depressed about her loneliness.  We talked for quite awhile about what is going on in her life.  What is different for her, and fortunately so, is that she is healthy and able to get around.  Many other older adults of that age that I come into contact with are homebound, or go out only for doctors visits or for other medical reasons.  This woman is financially in a good place and does not have to be concerned about money, as many older adults do. Her mind is strong.  In significant ways, she is fortunate.

But her loneliness is real, and her pain cannot be ignored.  I have been thinking about her because she is an example of the emotional and social predicament of many older people.  She is invisible. When we got onto the topic of politics, she really came alive.  She has very strong political opinions, but sees no outlet for expressing them.  We talked about starting with her City Council representative.  Or, are there local groups that provide a place for her to engage in political activism? (Do these groups reach out to adults her age?)

I asked her if she uses a computer.  She does not.  The whole process of getting a computer and maintaining it seems out of reach.  Who can assist? 

My point is that this woman Thinks, but she cannot bring herself to Call or Write. This is a great loss to her and to the political environment that languishes because so many people "don't have time" to participate in democracy.  She has the time, but lacks the opportunity.

I saw a woman yesterday at the Farmers' Market wearing a plastic name tag that said in bold letters "VOLUNTEER"  It caught my attention because I have been thinking lately about the experience of Volunteering.  For one reason, I just resigned after completing four years as a several-days- a-month Volunteer in long term care.  For another, I currently do two days a week in a different Volunteer role. And over the years I have Volunteered in various capacities. 

The name tag was perfect because it conveys the vacuum behind the term Volunteer.  That was the woman's only perceptible identity.  Now I know that it is not politically correct to say that, but it is from the perspective of Volunteer Users that I make that comment.   Being a Volunteer generally requires no particular background or field of knowledge except good will, and its sole reward is a certain inner satisfaction for the person Volunteering.  Most often, the role one Volunteers for is very narrowly defined and, by definition, becomes boring rather quickly, unless the level of making a difference is very dramatic.    Licking stamps is not at that level.

Of course, the most important thing about Volunteering is that the person who gives time and effort is receiving something in return.  In my experience, the Volunteer organization assumes that "doing good" is its own reward.  It is , but only for awhile.  Unlike the workplace, Volunteer organizations have no incentive to enrich what one offers to do as a Volunteer.  And, with some exceptions, the role becomes that of putting one's finger in the hole in the dike, without any opportunity to express a worthwhile opinion, because if one had a worthwhile opinion, one would be doing paid work.  Get it? ( In our society, one is worth what one gets paid.)

I offer these thoughts only in general.  After 9/11, vanloads of volunteers came to New York City from churches in the South to help clean the apartments in the surrounding neighborhood.  That is not the vacuum I refer to.  I am referring to organizations  that make a business of using V olunteers, but see them merely as fingers in the hole in the dike, not as persons with abilities who perhaps have worthwhile ideas - at least occasionally?