Old Age: A Beginner's Guide (2016)

by Michael Kinsley

Shay Bintliff's Review on the Pathography Blog.

A Very Ungrateful Old Lady

Sheila Solomon Klass was the mother of the pediatrician Perri Klass.  In her essay in the NY Times (11/8/2013) she wrote: 

"I am a legally blind octogenarian. I have wonderful adult children who often help me, but I can never accept their help gracefully.

It is a terrible thing to be a burden. They say I am not, but I know better. Perhaps many of you have parents like me.

See A Very Ungrateful Old Lady.

Sheila Klass died in March 2014. 

Sheila Klass and daughter, Perri

 

AN EARLY AFTERLIFE

by Linda Pastan  Web Site

in the fallacy of perfect health
before whatever is going to happen
happens. We could perfect our parting,
like those characters in On the Beach
who said farewell in the shadow
of the bomb as we sat watching,
young and holding hands at the movies.
We could use the loving words
we otherwise might not have time to say.
We could hold each other for hours
in a quintessential dress rehearsal.

Then we could just continue
for however many years were left.
The ragged things that are coming next—
arteries closing like rivers silting over,
or rampant cells stampeding us to the exit—
would be like postscripts to our lives
and wouldn’t matter. And we would bask
in an early afterlife of ordinary days,
impervious to the inclement weather
already in our long-range forecast.
Nothing could touch us. We’d never
have to say goodbye again.

—Linda Pastan, from An Early Afterlife

The Liberation of Growing Old

by Anne Karpf

NY Times, January 3, 2015

This thoughtful essay addresses some of our society’s attitudes toward the elderly and touches on “gernotophobia.”

Excerpt:  “…at the start of the 19th century, the idea of aging as part of the human condition, with its inevitable limits, increasingly gave way to [our current] conception of old age as a biomedical problem to which there might be a scientific solution. What was lost was a sense of the life span, with each stage having value and meaning.”

FullText Link

Art: An Old Man and his Grandson, ca. 1490, by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

The Remains by Mark Strand

This is a poem about aging and death.  It is poignant and evokes deep feeling.  The poet died in November 2014 and part of the poem was printed in his NY Times Obit.

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

Full Poem.

When I Am Old

by Moyra Donaldson

I'll have dewlaps and a hump and say what all the time

in a cross voice: on every one of my bony crony fingers

a ring. My lips painted with a slash of bright fuchsia,

I'll drink margaritas by the tumbler full and if my dealer

dies before I do, I'll just have to look for younger suppliers.

I can't imagine not being interested in sex, but if it happens,

so be it, really I could do with a rest, complete hormonelessness.

I may forget who I am and how to find my way home, but be

patient, remember I've always been more than a little confused

and never did have much of a sense of direction. If I'm completely

demented, I'm depending on friends: you know who you are.

"When I Am Old" by Moyra Donaldson, from Selected Poems. © Liberties Press, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

Appeared on The Writer's Almanac, November 14, 2014 (if you click on the link, you can listen to it).

Sheila Klass' Last Blog Post

(her granddaughter, Josephine, uploaded this on March 31, 2014, four days after Sheila died)

These days I am a virtual prisoner.  My treacherous body, after eight and a half decades, staged a bloodless coup and took over.  Yes, my muscles, my nervous system, my glands, indeed whatever parts of me cannot think – suddenly and without warning – seized control and now they determine what I can do.

After 85 years of idiosyncratic independence, of resisting Authority, and its boring handmaiden, Common Sense, indeed, rejecting any “higher” earthly judgment (even doctors’ edicts during medical crises) I have been totally compromised.  Reduced to slavish obedience. How was this shameful defeat accomplished?  I grew old.

Full Post: Yes, I Dare to Eat a Peach.

"Ungrateful Mother" and Proud Daughter.

Sheila Solomon Klass

Perri Klass is a remarkable pediatrician and writer.  Last year, her mother, Sheila S. Klass, an English professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, wrote a remarkable piece in the NY Times entitled “A Very Ungrateful Old Lady.

 It begins:

“I am a legally blind octogenarian. I have wonderful adult children who often help me, but I can never accept their help gracefully.

It is a terrible thing to be a burden. They say I am not, but I know better. Perhaps many of you have parents like me."

Sheila Klass died on March 26, 2014.

Her daughter, Perri  had a follow-up piece in the May 28, New York Times, called “She Wasn’t So Ungrateful, After All.”

"My mother’s essay resonated with many readers, reminded them of their aging parents or of themselves. I’m not sure that everyone is ready for certain kinds of honesty from people toward the end of life, trapped in bodies that are progressively betraying them after decades of service, facing the future with the daily reminders that come from losing friends and contemporaries, perhaps picking up messages in the air on special frequencies not audible to the rest of us."

 

Perri Klass

These essays are book-ends – both are keepers.  They will give you insights you are unlikely to get from “The Literature.”

See: A Very Ungrateful Old Lady
See: She Wasn't So Ungrateful, After All
Sheila Solomon Klass Obituary

  

 

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

In “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?,” the cartoonist-philosoph, Roz Chast, reminds us how deftly the graphic novel can capture ordinary crises in ordinary American lives, how a mixture of cartoons and photographs and text can create a family portrait with all the intimacy and emotional power of a conventional prose memoir.

The portrait of filial love and duty in “Can’t We Talk” will resonate with baby boomers grappling with their own aging parents — from worries about their safety, to the resurfacing of ancient family arguments, to nerve-racking dealings with hospitals and nursing care and hospices.

Full NY Times book review.
Paula Span talks with Roz Chast about "Cant We Talk About Something More Pleasant" in the NYTimes blog, The New Old Age.