Aging Gracefully For Other People, Not Yourself (Or, Thinking About "A Place For Mom")

Now that the Baby Boomers have reached a certain age, a lot more of us are running into the complications that come with getting older. One of those complications is subtle. Other people start telling you who you should be and what you ought to do. When that happens often enough, you begin to feel that your life is no longer yours to steer, that the road ahead only goes down. And once you believe that, you stop keeping your mind sharp, your body moving, your skills in use.

There is a second trap too: the assumption that an older person can't read their own mind, can't grasp their own medical situation, can't judge what they are and aren't able to do. I started treatment for sleep apnea not long ago. Between what my doctors told me, what I read, and what I lived through, I understood the condition was serious enough that it was sometimes clouding my awareness. So I stopped driving for a while, until a CPAP machine brought the apnea under control.

Some of my family read that whole situation differently. I got criticized for being honest with the doctor, even though honest was exactly what I was being, and the result was that I lost my driving privileges until things cleared up. Worth remembering: not long before all this, during one of those same episodes behind the wheel, I had asked my family to drive me in for immediate care for my asthma.

Before any of this, nobody had placed a single limit on my driving. Afterward, the family wanted rules. Someone riding along with me. A boundary drawn around how far I could go. I have already narrowed things down on my own to nearby towns, doctor's appointments, and church. But having a designated passenger sitting there grading my every turn solves nothing. I want my attention on the road, not on the inspector in the passenger seat.

Yes, I live with physical disabilities. Over the years, though, the picture of what I can and cannot do has actually gotten better, not worse. Am I obligated to decline? Or does the decline arrive precisely because everyone expects me to surrender to it? I have taken on more of the housekeeping and the shopping. I babysit the grandchildren while my husband sits in front of the television, and it keeps me moving. Every week I post to my website. Every month I balance the checkbook and pay the bills. I have made trips by myself.

The real question is how the younger people in my family, and younger people I know generally, see me. Is it their convenience talking, or their mistaken ideas about what aging means? So ask yourself: does age come from the passing of years, from what others expect of you, or from the simple act of quitting?

I keep adding to what I know, mostly by reading. I scan the internet and watch the news. I keep up with fashion magazines and programs, follow the interior decorating channels and publications, and pay attention to religious and spiritual matters in print, on television, and online. I talk to myself when there's no suitable audience around, working out ideas for talks I'd like to give on all sorts of subjects. My family, meanwhile, frets that I'll embarrass myself by writing something on the internet or in my blog. And them? They don't read the blog. If they ever did, I suspect it would be to edit it rather than read it. Five years I've been writing this thing.

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