"SUCCESSFUL" AGING

Just came across an interesting article on "successful" aging.  The author, D.A. Wolf, opened with an excellent point:

We’re a success-obsessed society. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to stumble into the term “successful aging.”  But I was. And at first, I was confused.  What could successful aging possibly mean? Managing to stay healthy – until you’re not? Having sufficient money to cover doctor’s bills and medications? Avoiding, if possible, being shuffled off to a home – tucked out of sight and mind, even more invisible than the worst invisible day in midlife?

She came across a Psychology Today article written Kathryn Betts Adams, PhD, MSW.  (What I'd give to that combo of letters after my name!)  Dr. Adams takes Ms. Wolf's point & runs with it!

As a gerontologist, I probably see it (the term) more often than most of you, but I believe it is an idea that captures the imagination at midlife.  We Baby Boomers are pretty competitive, and we like to do things well, so we are eager to prove we can age well. We’ve seen the ads for medications in magazines and the self-help columns and books spouting other related phrases, too: “vital aging,” “productive aging,” and various “age-defying” products. 

It's an interesting article, well worth the read if you have the time.  But although I found it worthwhile, its various suggestions on what could be described as successful aging were far from what I would describe, as letterless as I am.  

I believe that everyone - no matter what their state of mental or physical condition - can lay claim to successful aging IF they are making the most of what they have available.  Which might be a pretty lousy physical condition or increasing memory problems or other difficulties.  It doesn't mean the absence of those realities, but rather making the most of everything else.  Seeing them as the boulders in a white water rafter's water course, which she spots and uses the force of her element to slip past.  

My Mom - god bless her! - put it pretty well in an article SHE wrote about a year before her death in 2001, at 91:

(Life) is not all "beer and skittles"--there are some rough patches. The changes that come with old age are scary, especially changes in life roles. I have not enjoyed the hands-on role of wife for over 26 years. At ninety, I cannot even manage the role I played as a parent. The resources just are not there. I cannot provide massive emotional or even minor financial support. I cannot wash a floor or do the grocery shopping or even dust my own room. (I can still shell hard boiled eggs and clean mushrooms!) 

Mom looked at the crumbling of her physical condition without a "Woe is me!" attitude.  As she entered her 90s, it was what she expected, or as Mom put it, "Today, my body constantly clues me in that it is merely temporary. It is breaking down. That is in the order of things, however rotten it is to experience. "  

Where was Mom when she had the fall that ushered in her final hospital stays, her departure from us?  In Alexandria, Virginia, where she was looking forward to playing host at a brunch for family and friends who lived in the Metro D.C. area.  She had to depend on us for a ride down from Bryn Athyn, couldn't enjoy the privacy of a separate room because she needed help getting to & from the "loo," had to always space her activities so she could do the maximum with her increasingly dwindling energy supplies.  She faced those challenges & moved past them, unlike a lot of people who would either avoid spotting them or be swept away by a sense of loss.

I wish that Mom could read this, the first post of a blog celebrating the work I intend to do from now to my own departure - helping my older friends live their own semblance of the life my Mom enjoyed to the end of her days.  Just as each of us can be as fit as possible within our reality of health, so each of us can age as successfully as possible, given our realities.  And it will look different for each and every one of us.    

It's been such a joy, over the past six weeks, to feel the loose ends of my life begin to untangle and then team up to form beautiful bows of new purpose & opportunity.  I have absolutely NO idea what my great endeavor - older2elder - will be in form & structure, but I am excited to find out.  It will be no easy task.  I am all inspired enthusiasm & a bit of experience;  what I need to become is master of the various aspects of helping olders ease into being elders, which means all sorts of revealing conversations with myself & others, lots of careful planning, and mega leaps of faith.

There is something spectacularly powerful in realizing that there is a great work to be done & that I'm the gal to do it, that this is where all of my life paths have been leading, what all of my experiences have been forging me to embrace.  Am I one of the most blessed humans on the face of this planet or what?!  

The past year was over-the-top wonderful, full of unexpected opportunity & newly discovered paths & gee whiz accomplishments.  And none of it just happened.  I put in a lot of years - decades & decades - of effort working toward I knew not what, but something I knew was out there, if only I didn't lose faith.  The same can be said of people who have tipped their way into elderdom - they put in decades & decades of effort getting to where they are, working toward an unseen goal, but something wonderful.  

I want to be their guide.  What makes me the right person to be doing this?  I mean, there are no initials after my name.  I don't even have a blog that people turn to for insight & inspiration. Just me, believing in what I have to give - and, better yet, believing in what my older friends have to give.  I believe that, with effort & inspiration & joy, that will be enough.  Together, we'll find their definition of "successful" aging.