Awhile back, I downloaded the phone app “We Croak.” It’s based on a Bhutanese belief that to live fully we must contemplate death often. Become its friend. Five times daily at random moments the app pops up with quotations to spur such thoughts.
But contemplating death is not, I believe, the discipline I most need. Instead, I need an app called “I Fail” or “I Decline.” And quotes that offer clear-eyed words about the next chapter of my life. What advancing years are wont to bring. Wise sayings not about mortality but about our bodies’ and minds’ deterioration. And how we might live those dim and waning times.
That is, after all, what my friends and I talk about. We speculate about our acquaintances and the thin line on which they teeter between independence and reliance on others. That no man’s land between familiar routines, even those that are getting more difficult and chancy, and the land of the very old—the dependent, the vulnerable.
We sound supportive as we gossip. We tut. And shake our heads. We see the coming disasters so clearly. One fall. One loss of caregivers. One turn into confusion. And we anticipate—for our friends, of course, and with some righteousness—the much dreaded outcomes: a move to Ascension Retreat, Holiday Haven, Life Care Gardens, Autumn Acres, Harbor Village, Touchstone Ranch. The cunningly named purgatories further defined by slickly warm adjectives: gracious, active, homey, cozy.
But WE, WE are good at buzzing along, adapting, trimming our expectations, pulling in our horns, making do. We attempt to exercise and eat and read ourselves into stasis. We try the panaceas that doctors and AARP offer. We’ve done our best to sort belongings and write wills. We aren’t foolhardy about these next years.
But neither are we especially realistic.
We anticipate some outside assistance. We see our spare rooms as homes for a grateful, helpful college student or a young retiree who could look in on us. We think our money might just stretch for home health aides. Our friends have said: call me if you need a hand. Our children may be close by. We know, vaguely, that our community offers meals on wheels and bus service.
There is, of course, always the off chance that we will die quickly and without fuss. At home. But two-thirds of us won’t. We will have moved or “been put” into one form or another of an institution.
So what do we do? What do I do? I’ve spent longer thinking about that than applying words to this page. And still suspect that I must dig much deeper.
But first, albeit with some reluctance, I’m inclined to think that keeping more fit than I am is a grand idea. No guarantees, but why invite trouble. Then I suspect, I should sort more—dive into the trunks and drawers that hold what I couldn’t give away a year or so ago and purge again. And keep doing that.
Then, then I think I need to live lightly, thankfully. To savor today’s gifts more than I do now. And to understand that the heart of this world’s sweetness lies in people and pets and words and art and music. To recognize that every day brings me a concert and an art gallery and a classic and love. If I look for them. If I choose to accept their presence. It isn’t just martyrdom or downcast acceptance. It is—in its own way—just seeing what is and being grateful for it. I discovered this past week, for example, that the Chevy dealership’s rainbow of helium balloons makes me uncommonly happy. And two new kittens may not be wise additions to my 75-year-old-life. But we each thrive on the other’s love!
Next, I’m considering my own time as daughter and daughter-in-law. Meal maker. Caregiver. Arranger. When the tables are turned, I want to accept that assistance with nothing but a glad and contented heart and tongue. Our children and our friends haven’t really factored our dependency into their mid-life agendas.
And if or when I need an institutional purgatory, I must accept that decline and debility is as much a part of life as birth and death. And that our purgatories are palaces compared to where most of the world’s citizens live.
Along the way, I might be wise to picture those final months or years baldly. Look unflinchingly at the realities of incontinence, inactivity, dementia, fear. I might escape, but then again I might not.
So let my Apple watch buzz. Let my “I Fail” app ding. I think it says:
“The thing about growing old is you have to accept it – if you don’t, you’ll be as miserable as sin. You’ve got to try and find the few good things about it.” Judy Parfitt ©
