Do Ask. Do Tell.

In my Third Act Coffee Klatch last month, we talked about “who tells us when it’s time?” Time to stop driving, time to get hearing aids, time to downsize. Time to talk to a professional about cognitive decline or changing balance. Who sees us and knows as things change? Who listens when we notice and want to talk about it? Who encourages us to tell about it?

My sisters and I were lucky with our mother, she knew when she needed to do at least the first two of those. But she had early and significant hearing and vision loss, and good mental faculties at that time; she was aware her quality of life depended on being attentive to her decline. The good cognition also kept her from downsizing when she probably should have, though, and maybe no one could have told her it was time to look ahead. The thing is, no one tried, and she didn’t ask. At least my sisters and I were not in conversation with her about it. Did she talk about it with friends? I have no idea.

☀︎Idea! Gather a group of friends to meet regularly to talk about aging. Agree to tell each other hard truths. Find ways to assist one another.

Our father, though, was a different story. When I came home for a visit a couple years before he died, he and my mother picked me up at SeaTac. As we drove the seventy-five miles home on the interstate, his driving became erratic, straying back and forth over the lane line. My dad was always the best of drivers, and while I’m an edgy passenger, I was never anxious with him at the wheel. It took me a few moments from the back seat to notice he was dozing off. “Daddy!” I said sharply, “pull over right now and let me drive.” He complied, but I don’t think he would have asked me to drive; I don’t know if my mother would have noticed.

My sisters and I had busy lives on the other side of the country, we were not paying attention to our parents’ aging in Washington. My mother was handling my father’s health, or trying. And we were leaving her to it. But he was stubborn. She wanted to move, and he refused. Would he have stopped driving when it was time? I had noticed his hearing declining, but—like my own—it probably was only bad enough to make other people crazy repeating things. If she told him he needed hearing aids, he probably would have dismissed her.

☀︎Idea! When I cleaned out my father’s desk drawers, I found pocket calendars for every year from his retirement until the year he died (15 of them), in which he noted health issues and diagnoses. So he was paying attention, he just wasn’t sharing it. I have started my own journal, because you never know when a medical professional might need to know when you started feeling fatigued, when that pain began. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s something. (His diaries are interesting to me now; maybe mine will be to my children someday—when they are entering elderhood.)

It’s hard for partners and children to get through to a beloved. Hard to ask for help, hard to tell them they need it. I got hearing aids when my sister and daughter suggested I needed them. It was not without resentment, or more likely embarrassment. And what is that about? We don’t want to age, and we don’t like to notice signs that we are; we surely don’t want others to notice. And family is not good at telling, either. They are irritated with us for not hearing—I was with my mother. She’s not even trying to hear me. Of course, that was not true. I didn’t want her to be old.

Many of us don’t have children or siblings or a partner to tell us, in any case, or they live far away. So who does see us, who could tell us? Friends who live on an island in Washington have a group of friends committed to helping each other as they age. And they also notice when a neighbor who walks past their house daily doesn’t one day, and they check on her. I told the Third Acts I hoped our meetup group might be that for each other. Truth, though, is we would have to be in contact more than an hour a month to truly see each other. But perhaps we are laying the groundwork now, while we are still “young.” How can you be Creatively Intentional in these emerging (or full-on) elderhood years?

I don’t have answers. I just know we need to ask the questions, and then we can create solutions. I want to have a conversation with my family, letting them know it’s okay to “say something when they see something.” (And to please do it kindly and with love. Honestly, I do not understand why our discomfort with saying hard things comes out harshly, or maybe we just hear it that way. We need to do and be better.) I need to vow to listen and not stubbornly refuse to accept their suggestions. I need to tell them I want to hear—even if I don’t respond as if I do. And, this is big, we need to have a plan for what to do with the information.

“It is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.
It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.”
—Heidi Priebe

Don’t you love that quote? I do. And always, in the entirety of life, we need to travel with ourselves, honoring all our versions.

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Medicare at Home

As the largest-ever elder generation “comes of age,” and are living longer (but not necessarily healthier) something has to be done about caring for us. Vice President Harris proposed a plan to permit Medicare to help cover the costs of long-term home health care aides for seniors.

“Vice President [Harris] just proposed a historic new ‘Medicare at Home’ benefit to help families with caregiving needs. Under her plan, Medicare would cover home care for the first time ever for all of our nation’s seniors and those with disabilities on Medicare, in addition to vision and hearing benefits to help seniors live independently for longer. . . . Medicare at Home will also reduce hospitalizations. Vice President Harris will also call on Congress to stop a practice in which seniors’ homes are seized following long-term Medicaid care” (Jessica Craven, “Chop Wood, Carry Water,” 10/8/24). How will it be paid for? When Harris announced the plan on ABC’s The View she stated it would come “from savings realized through Medicare’s new ability to negotiate drug prices—an ability Republicans are eager to end—and through cracking down on Medicare fraud” (Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters From an American,” 10/8/24).

Please vote by November 5!

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eBook Sale! It’s the second anniversary of the publication of my memoir! To celebrate both the anniversary and caregivers everywhere in November (and every day), the eBook version of Mother Lode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver will be on sale ($3.99, wherever you buy eBooks) from November 1-15, 2024.

As always, I would love to hear from you. What are your ideas and thoughts about embracing this version of you, and the next one. Leave a comment below!

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