From where I live, roughly 2,500 miles away, I transmit my love and care for my aging parents. The space between breeds some heartache and guilt, but when I can focus on the progressive solutions, at least, I’m not inflating those feelings unnecessarily. I’m certainly most helpful to my parents when I can tap into the more positive feelings and actions.
It’s one of the strange ironies of life that when you need your memory the least, you have the most of it. When you are younger, you barely have to think about things like medicine, what to eat, or how to handle a routine. You can throw anything into your body and be fine. But older adults who have a stricter medical regiment also are the most likely to suffer lapses in memory and difficulty holding onto routines.
We all know what it means to experience particular challenges and vulnerabilities—sometimes based on the phase of life we’re in; a health condition that limits us physically, mentally, or even emotionally; or maybe a job that invites risks and complications. In older age, we may be challenged to trust more people and more social services that help fulfill some of our needs. That extension of trust is itself a vulnerability, and the harm done to older adults under these conditions of trusted service—and in situations where other vulnerabilities are exploited—is considered elder abuse.
Known as “The Bookworm,” Therese is never without one or two volumes tucked under her arm or open under her nose. From a young age, she loved to live vicariously through the adventures of her fictional heroes and heroines. Now that she’s retired, she has even more time to journey through these fascinating stories.
There aren’t too many phrases that evoke more dread and fear than “open-heart surgery.” After all, the patient is literally having their chest opened and their heart operated on, which is not something you usually want to happen. In many ways, the main difference between surgery and violence is the intent.
Our language has a lot of metaphors for being calm: “A port in a storm,” and, “The still point of the turning world,” are just two examples. They all engagingly invoke a common image: There is tumult, and somewhere in that tumult, there is peace. You just have to find it. The reason these metaphors are so prevalent is because life often feels like a raging swirl, a chaotic mess of stress, emotional entanglements, and uncertainty.
It wasn’t that long ago that housing specifically for the LGBT community was, at best, unthinkable, and at worst, very dangerous. There might have been some instances when apartment owners turned a blind eye and rented to “spinsters” or “confirmed bachelors,” but larger groups of LGBT members living together could be turned on in an instant by authorities or by the community.
Everyone deserves to grow older with dignity and pride, and without having to hide who they are. At Institute on Aging (IOA), we strongly support LGBTQ rights and feel that older adults, who had to spend much of their life hiding, deserve to celebrate who they are. These aren’t special rights: These are basic human needs that are just, fair, and moral. That’s why we are honored to celebrate Pride Month with our amazing LGBTQ community and everyone else who wants to join in.
In song and story, and even in our perception of ourselves, life is pictured as a journey. It’s a metaphorical path, like a Keane kid dotted-line doodle, from birth to death, zig-zagging along river and dale. But when we get older, while we might be moving metaphorically, we too often stop moving physically. That path isn’t quite a dead end, but we are walking in place.
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