85 Is Not the New 65

I’ve written a couple of lengthy similar articles recently about caregiving challenges facing the elderly (here’s one: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/december/aseniormoment.html.) As we live longer thanks to medicine and technology, that life isn’t necessarily filled with quality health wise. For every codger on the tennis courts, there are five more wheezing in a nursing home.

In fact, only 5 percent of Americans older than 85 are fully functional. I come from hearty stock. Uncle Ralph on my dad’s side is 92 and living alone, in full mental and physical control. Uncle Joe on my mom’s side is similarly fit at 87.

My own mom is nearing 94. Five years ago she was peppy, able to operate a computer and drive. Now she spends most days lying in bed, unable to read or concentrate fully. A broken hip started a gradual decline from walker to wheelchair. Still, she gets quality care in a nursing home, both from staff and hospice workers.

I have a little more sympathy for the elderly now that middle age is advancing and I see retirement a little more than a decade down the road. This past year has brought bouts of arthritis, tendonitis and bursitis, bringing my mortality into sharper focus.
That means it’s all the more essential to eat right and exercise while I’m still in relatively good health.

The Onset of Senility?

Nothing makes a middle-aged guy feel like he has graduated to old age like losing his wallet and cell phone on the same day.

The saving grace in both instances involved being able to pinpoint the parameter of misplacing the items.

In the case of the wallet, I remember paying for lunch in the work cafeteria, but I noticed it no longer was in my pocket during my afternoon stroll around the building. Panic ensued.

I checked in the dining room, notified the front desk, told security, informed people in my office. Then I felt the Lord prompting me to look in a desk drawer. There it was! Never in 11 years of working here had I put my billfold in a desk drawer, but for some absentminded reason I did that day. It’s an embarrassment I can live with.

That night when I got home from small group at church, I noticed my phone no longer in the pouch attached to my belt. This is when those am-I-losing-my-mind thoughts really kicked in. Yet I knew the phone had to have fallen out in the car or driveway, or at church. The next day on the way to work I stopped at church and found the phone inside, a few inches from the door.

The dread in losing such items is partly the potential cost of replacing them, but primarily the inconvenience: canceling credit cards, getting a new driver’s license, reprogramming all those stored phone numbers. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go through any of that.

I felt better that next day when I got to work and a much young co-worker told me she had spent 15 minutes that morning looking for her lost car keys. Of course she found them in the most obvious place where she left them the night before: the ignition.

Age Discretion Is Advised

Routinely when I’m writing feature-length articles I include the ages of subjects mentioned in the stories. An age helps better identify people, showing, for example, how long they may have been engaged in a career. And like a middle initial, it helps distinguish them from other people with the same name, especially if it’s a common name such as Jeff Smith or Ben Jones.

But lately I’ve had three sources, all of them involved in Christian ministry, ask me not to print their ages. They all seemed embarrassed at the number of years they had been around.

A woman in her 50s who heads a mission agency begged me not to list her age. She indicated that somehow it would hurt her donor base if people found out.

A pastor in his 50s likewise told me that including his age in an article could hinder his outreach to young people who might not think he is as relevant as he tries to be.

And a filmmaker in his 40s insisted I excise his age from the article. If anyone in the movie business found out how old he really is it would be curtains for his career.

These excuses all seemed a bit over the top, a strange mixture of vanity and fear. I suspect this apprehension of telling our age comes from a culture that glorifies youth. We’re told if we’re not youthful enough we’re not useful.

I don’t think the Lord wants us to be ashamed of our age — or the natural aging process. No hair dye for me, thanks.

Life at 92

My brother and I moved our 92-year-old mother into a nursing home a couple of weeks ago. She requested the switch from a residential care facility because she had fallen twice in the previous week. Quite naturally, she feared falling again and being left on the floor for hours before being discovered.

Sometimes, growing old isn’t so enjoyable. Until she broke her hip at age 89, my mom had been peppy and alert. But as time goes on, her physical and mental faculties diminish. Now she is in a wheelchair instead of using a walker. She has difficulty organizing her thoughts. She has trouble concentrating while reading. She really can’t write letters anymore. And going to the restroom is an ordeal for a variety of reasons.

On a positive note, she likes her new roommate, has seemed to rediscover her sense of humor and is eating better since moving into the nursing home, where the staff is compassionate and friendly, from the groundskeepers to the meal servers.

But the move from a two-room apartment to a semiprivate room meant that my brother and I had to sell, discard or keep various clothes, furniture and mementoes. We have some new photos on the wall at home. My brother reminded me of when our uncle and aunt moved into an assisted-living facility a few years ago. They didn’t have room for all the photo albums of the trips they had taken as a couple. And none of the children wanted them.

Life is short. Have fun. Enjoy the memories. But don’t take too many photos.