Old age is like the skin disease currently plaguing me. My wonderful doctor said yesterday, “There is no cure for this disease, there is only treatment. Stop being surprised by it.” Same diagnosis for old age: It can't be “cured” but there's a lot of treatment to ease it.
When it was suggested I sum the major issues facing older people, it was like asking me to pour all of Lake Erie into my picnic thermal jug. Given that, here are the four major issues I came up with: Money, health, social status and intellectual status. The four treatments are: Acceptance, humor, prudence and prayer.
MONEY, HEALTH MELD
The issues of money and health are tied for first. Without sufficient funds for housing, food, clothing and the simplest needs, life can be miserable. And with increasing age comes increasing doctor visits and increasing medications. Here's where money and health meet head-on and meld: No matter how a marvelous new medicine can rescue me, if I can't afford to buy it, it won't help me. It's that simple.
Next we have our social status, wherein you are dismissed from the universe just because “you're old.” You can deny it to be politically correct, but the daily reality is we are dismissed
First, someone recently wrote in an article, “Old people can't accept changes.” Yet, in fact, with the exception of teenagers, older people past 60 make more changes in their lives than any other age bracket - and many do it well.
Another loss of social status happens when one enters a senior home. Several residents where I live report that, suddenly, friends who regularly included them in their social calendar before never drop in for a social visit after one becomes a resident in a home.
Former friends are suddenly “too busy,” albeit they weren't too busy a few years earlier when they enjoyed visits and parties in their old friend's home. They are still kind, good people; they just assume once you're cared for in a “home,” you don't need a visit.
The fourth issue of aging is intellectual status. Sure, age may slow the mind a bit (I never remember where I put my umbrella), but for most olders, this myth of losing intellectual capacity is just that - a myth. Einstein and Madame Curie were up in years when they did their best work, as are social activists, world leaders and authors. My 85-year-old neighbors operate computer, do bookkeeping and help manage an office.
FOUR TREATMENTS
So what's the treatment? I offer four. First, acceptance. You are going to get old. No matter what cosmetics, diet or exercise you use, the years will mount and take their toll. Rather than deny or agonize, why can't we accept this reality and look for ways to make it enjoyable? To deny your age is to deny all the years you were gifted with on this Earth.
Next treatment is humor. Not joke telling, but seeing the laughs presented every day by the very things that impede us in age. My father was great at it, laughed a lot and gave us his gift of humor. It's not easy, but laughing at yourself and at what happens around you provides a lot of anesthetic to the pain of aging. Now science tells us it improves your health at every age.
Prudence is the third treatment. Once you accept that we will grow old, we need to be careful with the challenges we take on. Prudence is knowing I can't polka or jitterbug as I used to, but accepting the good time I can still have with friends at a dance.
Prudence is recognizing I can no longer afford or manage to keep a household, and accepting a move to a senior community while I can still make that decision and create a good lifestyle.
The last, or perhaps the first, treatment is prayer. If you haven't looked into developing your spiritual life yet, you better hurry.
Jean Nero writes for The Repository in Canton, Ohio. Her column, “Who, Me, Old?” appears every other week.
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