So wait, which thread are we rehashing this time? Come through with the link, ogged, and we might even be able to have the entire 1000-comment thread through the medium of links to our old comments.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
Sure there is: Republican presidential candidate.
1: old folks homes are symptoms of a great sickness.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
Senator!
Geez, comment three and I'm pwned. Good thing it's my alter ego.
there's no point at which you just become the old person who sits around grumping and telling stories, being waited on by your descendants--that role is now an activity, just a break before everyone gets back to "normal" life, in which they take care of themselves by themselves.
But has there ever been a time in America where the old person activity was a desired role? Seems to me that old people have always valued their independence most of all, living on their own as long as physically possible - or, more to the point, at least a few months beyond physically possible, until something happens.
Being pwned by your alter ego is a sure sign of aging, Sifu.
Or should I say Grandpaps?
That ain't my kid! He's got too many arms!
The two roles that exist--doting grandparent or active senior--depend on having either a temporary social existence (the doting grandparent is like a special guest star, but not a series regular) or a perpetual one that mimics youth (activity depends on forestalling age itself).
You're right, though, that the ways that society arranges itself just don't accomodate an old person just sittin' around.
My father had his first heart attack last week. So I've now mentally revised my life expectancy down by a decade.
OTOH, I've found out that he has a lot more money than I thought he did, so I've mentally revised my expected inheritance up by five figures.
All in all, it was a mixed week.
There was a general store in the town where we went to church when I was a kid, and there was a back room where old dudes would sit around playing checkers and chewing tobacco. That's been gone for two decades.
In colonial New England people routinely lived independently well into their eighties. In colonial Virginia it wasn't an issue because nobody lived that long.
Very empathetic of you Ogged. And Po-Mo, the old threads to you are new to me, which actually is a turnaround for me, so that is pretty cool.
My Dad took early retirement back when GlobalCorp would buy out their expensive (meaning older) "resources" instead of simply telling them shove off.
As an aside did anyone else notice when people stopped being people (addressed by the personnel department) and became "resources" (addressed by the Human Resources department) like all the other consumables?
Back to it, my Dad pointed out that before retirement you are something, usually your job. After retirement you are nothing. Just retired, which means nothing.
My father-in-law, owning his own business, was able to slowly reduce his work hours until his late 70's, and I am certain this helped keep his mind and body active. Now he's wasting away with Lewy Body Dementia which I said in a previous thread means both his mind and his coordination are going.
Visiting a nursing home is dreadful, and I don't mean either the care (although it might be) or the residents. What is dreadful is what happens to many people at that stage in life and what is dreadful is knowing that the alternatives are dying slowly or dying quickly and in the end there are no other alternatives.
There is a role, but you have to live in Florida. And you have to pronounce it Flah-ri-da.
I walked by an honest-to-God American Legion post the other day, tucked in among the warehouses near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. A bunch of old guys were inside watching TV and drinking cheap beer. Seemed much better than a retirement home, but don't you have to be a veteran?
As an aside did anyone else notice when people stopped being people (addressed by the personnel department) and became "resources" (addressed by the Human Resources department) like all the other consumables?
The guy who is responsible for this word swap was on This American Life.
13: "Resources are our most valuable asset!"
And Po-Mo, the old threads to you are new to me, which actually is a turnaround for me, so that is pretty cool.
Oh, it was a pretty decent thread. A touch acrimonious, but interesting. I just wasn't about to dig it up myself because I'm ostensibly figuring out how much operating leverage this damn company has, and I didn't remember anything that would help me pull the old thread out of the Googley-Hoohole.
Ugh. I just had the feeling that my whole live-one-continent-away-from-my-parents schtick isn't going to be as comforting when their feebleness overcomes their annoyingness. And, god bless 'em, they've been getting steadily less annoying for several years now.
I walked by an honest-to-God American Legion post the other day, tucked in among the warehouses near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.
There's one of those in Albuquerque, at Lomas and I-25 (there are others too, but that's the one I'm familiar with).
Ogged quaint third world perspective is always welcome here at Unfogged. Next we'll be hearing a Moldavan spokesman for the Sabbatarian Brethen explain the flat earth for us.
There's a Legion club one town over, but the VFW has mostly replaced it around here.
2 so i thought just that all the candidates are trying to break those ceilings like gender, race, and age
If the army keeps raising its enlistment age in order to meet demand, it could create a valuable new niche giving seniors another chance to fit into society.
I once saw Fugazi play at the local American Legion Hall.
There was a general store in the town where we went to church when I was a kid, and there was a back room where old dudes would sit around playing checkers and chewing tobacco. That's been gone for two decades.
That sort of thing persists in old city neighborhoods. At my barber's, random old Italian dudes show up to pass the time and sweep up (!). My MIL ended up living in that neighb, and I keep encouraging her to get to know the neighbors, so that she can ease into dotage. She's in possibly the best part of the entire city for that kind of old age.
I'm pretty sure you can buy into the American Legion. But you also have to have reprehensible politics, so that's the tradeoff for the beer.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
I'm aspiring to "Creepy Lecherous Old Neighbor", myself.
That sort of thing persists in old city neighborhoods.
And in not-so-old city neighborhoods. I go to a vintage/new clothing store that's run by a couple of old guys and whenever I'm in there, they're usually arguing, grumping, or telling stories. There's plenty of roles for old people, there just isn't any security in those roles.
There was a general store in the town where we went to church when I was a kid, and there was a back room where old dudes would sit around playing checkers and chewing tobacco. That's been gone for two decades.
The front porch of the general store on Main Street played this role in my town. Sadly, it has also passed, replaced by a bog standard convenience store with a big parking lot and neon signs out front. The general store was an anachronism even while it was still there (old mom & pop owners in aprons, every imaginable size screw and washer available if the owner looked long enough for it), but it sure was sad to see it go.
Being old in the suburbs has to suck. I tend to find that old people in NYC have it pretty great. There are thousands of cheap or free tickets to lectures, concerts, events, discussions, etc. every month, and old people can paste together quite a fun and non-taxing life out of going to these things, meeting other people, keeping their minds active, and whatnot. I've never lived in a place where I saw so many elderly people at academic lectures. Sure, they ask some dumb and offensive questions sometimes, but one gets used to it. Also, it's really easy for the elderly to audit college classes. I've had many elderly auditors, and they've been fantastic, eager, fun, helpful students.
My ex's mom was 82, with limited moving-around ability, but she could get to the 92nd-St Y for concerts and plays and stuff, and there are plenty of restaurants in walking distance from her apartment. I know I go on a lot about how wonderful density can be for things like public transit and lessening environmental impact, but density is also really great for the disabled and elderly. I can't imagine what my parents would do if they could no longer drive. They'd be fucked.
There's plenty of roles for old people, there just isn't any security in those roles.
On the "glass is half full" side, today's old people have Medicare, Social Security, less wear and tear on their bodies from a lifetime of labor; boner pills, all kinds of medical advances that extend life and mitigate the effects of aging; disproportionate influence in the political process; internet forums for all their old people interests (including porn, naturally); cable television, all the hit TV shows of their youth available on DVD; cheap and freely available booze; affordable air travel, the most luxurious RV's ever devised by the hand of man. The list could go on a long time.
I think you're mistaking the absence of large family clusters with the absence of an old-person role, ogged. And I think today is much, much better than yesterday (of course). Semi-active seventy something guy gets out these days. Fifty years ago, he wouldn't have been so fortunate. I'm not saying it's great to be old these days, but I'd rather be old today than old thirty years ago. And old thirty odd years from now will be better still.
I'm aspiring to "Creepy Lecherous Old Neighbor", myself.
Don't wait 'til you're old! You have to start preparing for that *decades* in advance.
VFW posts definitely provide old guy roles.
It's funny to me that the woman in one of my classes this semester kept announcing how proud she was to be SEVENTY YEARS OLD and still getting out and about. She seemed so young to me (as in, not super-old at all) that I decided to think of her as if she was 80 so that I would be more impressed.
I know I go on a lot about how wonderful density can be for things like public transit and lessening environmental impact, but density is also really great for the disabled and elderly.
This is an underappreciated facet of the Nixon-through-Reagan-era white backlash against racial integration and urban crime: a lot of older people liked living in the city, and resented the loss of the familiar pleasures of urban (neighborhood) living, either because they had fled to the suburbs, or felt like prisoners in their apartments. The exodus of families with children to the suburbs long preceded "white flight"; it was the exodus of older people that really marked the decline of American cities.
Senator!
Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. Sad.
I agree with the original post, and think this is a more major problem in American life than others seem to.
and 30 is quite true, my Mom lives this and it's great.
As much as I don't want to have kids myself, I have to admit that there does seem something sad about elderly people without grandkids. Then, of course, there's something even sadder about grandparents who don't see or who aren't close to their grandkids. I fear this is what will happen to my parents, as my brother is estranged and doesn't let them see his kid but once a year for an hour or so. They secretly hope I'll get knocked up, I think.
My mother guided her friends on Mexican tours when she was in her late seventies. Her health and strength was good until she was 85 or 86. She actually liked being almost alone while she was able to take care of herself. Around here the community support is pretty dense. She didn't always know either whether she was the supported or the supportee.
My grandparents had been living at my mother's (their daughter's) place for the last few years after getting to a point of no longer being able to care for themselves. My grandfather has rapidly progressing alzhiemers (SP?) [though thankfully is still not to the scared/violent stage that often comes] while my grandmother died yesterday of, more or less, being very old and having the body stop running well. They were pretty much models of the "long full life" people want- kids, reasonably well off, retired fairly early, travel all over the world, hobbies they enjoyed, etc. The last several years have had none of that. It's lucky my parents could take them in. It's made me think that what we have offered my parents for when then get in that state (taking them to the desert and shooting them) is really probably the better option.
My plan to breed AWB and Ogged and allot one grandchild to each grandmother was ignored.
Around here the community support is pretty dense. She didn't always know either whether she was the supported or the supportee.
Stodgy or not, that's the good life as far as I'm concerned.
I wonder and worry what's going to happen when all these aging boomers living out in the suburbs realize their kids live a thousand miles away and they don't know who their neighbors are and can't see well enough to drive.
44: I think my parents have embraced the church more fervently after my brother and I left in part because they know they'll need that community for help one day. They host dinners and events for the elderly, drive oldsters around, etc. I keep suggesting they just move closer to wherever I end up. I know that's selfish, but when they're old, they're going to be more movable than I am, and I have great doubts about the strength of their church community. They're not attached sentimentally to the area, and don't have some old family home or anything.
44: a massive, nationwide car accident somewhere in Nebraska as they all collide while trying to drive to their kid's houses.
shivbunny's family seems to have a good arrangement. His grandmother still lives on her own, but since they're out on the farm, her daughters live on the one end of the property, her sons on the other, and while she'd be independent anywhere, having her family* over for dinner every night is a great thing.
*She had nine kids, so the house is never empty.
47: That's roughly the sort of arrangement I was thinking of when I said that it was really the disappearance of clusters of family that mattered. The peculiar problem that old people have, it seems to me, is that their peers keep dying.
Po Mo,
Oh, it was a pretty decent thread. A touch acrimonious, but interesting. I just wasn't about to dig it up myself because I'm ostensibly figuring out how much operating leverage this damn company has, and I didn't remember anything that would help me pull the old thread out of the Googley-Hoohole.
Thanks for the summary. I was rushing off to defend myself in the OLD (meaning a couple days) thread about massive starvation.
In detail what I meant is that for me (having finally entered the "masters" category of track and field at age 50 and nearly at my 30th year with GlobalCorp)
I usually already know the movie plots and I bore people repeatedly with my old tales.
So a discussion that is old to others but new to me is a welcome rarity.
And as long as I'm off-topic - things move so fast here that it is hard to sustain a very long discussion.
I realize now that there is a certain 'image' to commenters that builds up over time and gives a context for his/her remaks. I used to have that here.
Having been gone planting trees in Kenya and coming back I have lost that, so when I am succinct I am misunderstood, or partly misunderstood.
This is fine and I really do welcome the criticism, even the name calling (I think crazed is a new one but so what) but I don't really like some of the language. I've been there and done that, believe me, but I try not to do it anymore.
49: boy people curse like fuckin' sailors around here anymore.
I think I've told this story before, but in high school I had a job at a pharmacy where my duties included delivering prescriptions. One elderly woman always invited me in for tea and a cookie, which was nice, but also so sad, because it was clear she was desperate for conversation and I might have been the only person that week who had talked to her.
The pharmacist never cared how quickly I made it back.
The pharmacist never cared how quickly I made it back.
Good for the pharmacist.
Knecht Ruprecht,
On the "glass is half full" side,
True enough. If they have no video games at the old folk's home when I get there I'm bringing my own!
On the half-empty side, longer lives without quality of life are pretty bad.
My wife has done care at an Alzheimer's assisted living facility and mentally the people there are in pretty bad shape. Their personality is gone along with their memories and some have regressed to an infantile and/or hostile state. That is a horrible thing to say, I know, but it is true.
she was desperate for conversation and I might have been the only person that week who had talked to her
This is my next-door neighbor, whose shut-in husband died last year and for whom I open jars and get boxes down from closets and such. And it is really sad. We gave her a TV we seldom used when her ancient one died a few months ago, because I couldn't imagine what else she'd do all day without one.
That is a horrible thing to say
No, just standard Alzheimer's progression.
I plan to shoot myself in the head when I'm 75 or so. Maybe 80.
This makes me sad. My aged parents will be taken cared of by any of the other five siblings (even if they disown me), so I am not too worried about them. But I read a lot about this in the course of my research about family and medical leave, which is of course not just a pregnancy/childcare issue. Families are not only scattered--they're getting smaller. The burden is on one or two kids. Retirement savings are not where they need to be, unsurprisingly. There's not a lot of options, and people are living longer. The social welfare/family leave laws/workplace culture is not changing to accommodate these problematic trends (which will only get worse). It's super depressing. I hope I die around 70-75, and I'm not kidding about this.
My plan for getting old personally is to get tenure, retired, and then show up old, cranky, and half-deaf to colloquia, yelling at the speaker.
41: Sorry to hear about your grandmother, not-famous matt.
No, just standard Alzheimer's progression.
A horrible truth then. Some people don't like to hear them.
Cala,
The best way to stay young is to diet.
When your hair turns gray dye it.
My plan is to be a horrible nuisance and then when the time comes go all at once.
Or maybe convince Congress that when they take away Social Security they should balance that by making all prescription drugs legal for people over 65 without a prescription and we old farts can either sell them to the youngsters or use them ourselves. Either way problem solved.
I walked by an honest-to-God American Legion post the other day, tucked in among the warehouses near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.
Hey, that's right near my studio! That American Legion post has a sign out front saying "236 brave Maryland soldiers are buried here ya-dee-da" and I've always wondered whether the Marylanders are beneath the Legion house, beneath the gas station, or beneath the vacant lot for sale. The Legion house has a pretty small footprint for 200 or so graves. A friend of mine told me that he just joined up on a lark---he's a US Air Force vet, a total Yippie---and he's going to look into the mass grave question for me.
_"Sorry to hear about your grandmother, not-famous matt. _"
Thanks- but it was more happy or a relief than sad. She'd be breaking down slowly for a long time (more than a year) after a life that really was "long and full" in any sense one could reasonably desire. I had never heard a single complain (I'm not kidding) out of her in her life, despite some fairly significant health problems, until 6-8 months ago and then I knew it was over soon. We were just glad it didn't linger longer and in a more sane world it wouldn't have lingered this long. The actual death wasn't sad at all.
My dad's in the American Legion. He loves it.
My aunt with MS is very much the warning sign. She's in her 60s, and she's in a nursing home, and while she can converse her short term memory is shot so she forgets what you talked about five minutes ago. Her best friend--who god bless her, lives in the town we've moved my aunt to and visits her every day and is basically in charge of her--is socially connected and physically active: she went hiking in the fucking Andes a couple years ago.
Them's the options, it seems.
My grandmother briefly moved into an assisted-living facility, but she couldn't stand it there, because she still has nearly all of her mental faculties and the other residents did not, so she felt like she was surrounded with zombies (her words). She moved back to an apartment by herself. Mostly, I think it's unfortunate that she couldn't find a place with some assistance and some similarly-competent old folks to shoot the breeze with and/or play Wii Bowling.
I think my father is doing it just about right. He's in a low-stress, low-work profession where the intellectual demands aren't too rigorous, and he refuses to retire.
He's in the kind of physical and mental shape you'd expect for an 80-year-old man who didn't take particularly good care of himself (but who didn't have any really bad vices either).
He just got out of the hospital today, where he checked in for some routine maintenance shortly after the last day of classes.
Oh, man, I worry about this. Mine are both still very healthy, but I wish Dad would move back into NYC; I'm so worried about ten years from now, when he can't drive anymore. And Mom, much as I love her, is prickly -- if I have to take care of her at any point, I have no idea how that's going to work.
Couldn't you just keep buying them water buffaloes?
Oh, man, I worry about this.
It's a pretty big worry. Just a few years ago, I would read about the "sandwich generation" (those people, and most especially women, who are looking after both children and elderly parents) and think, 'Oh gee, that sounds rough,' but in somewhat 'abstracted from actual material conditions' terms. Lately (this past year or so), it has become much more real to me. There's actually no novelty in women looking after children and elders, of course, but what's new and not necessarily improved is living about a thousand miles away from the objects of one's tender solicitude.
68 and everyone else who's talked about being worried: we probably all know that the wisdom, and correct it is, is to try to broach these subjects with your parent(s). I've been lucky in that my mom was, before she retired, an RN specializing in gerontology; she saw the need to talk plainly about these things starting about 5 years ago, when she was 65.
We sort of do it by appointment: she says she needs to talk to us (my brother and me) and we do so at the appointed time. Our normal time together is very ... superficial? Chatty, talking about the relatives, kidding around, cooking. I can't say how much I respect and appreciate that my mom instituted this serious family talk time when it's called for. So we've discussed what should happen if/when she becomes unable to live alone, what will happen to her house; we've done some legal work so that I have access to her accounts and various other things. She's keeping a file on the house. For when the time comes.
I don't intend to sound preachy. Many people here probably already have these kinds of things in place, as a matter of course, but my family was never like that. Mom (and dad, before he died) just took care of things out of our line of sight. But it can't really work that way, so if you don't already, talk to your parents about it.
(/end sincerity)
but also so sad, because it was clear she was desperate for conversation and I might have been the only person that week who had talked to her.
Of course, we will have the internets. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
This was once voted the most popular poem in Britain.
For a more bitter (American) take on aging, try Robert Frost. As I approach 65, I take it seriously:
Provide, Provide
Robert Frost
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
B,
she went hiking in the fucking Andes a couple years ago.
Now that sounds like an interesting place. Where is it exactly?
dr ngo,
Oh yeah, Frost. Even when younger I knew what the "so lovely, dark and deep" woods meant.