Becoming an elder

For Christmas, a friend got me a subscription to a magazine on spirituality. I was enjoying the articles in the first issue, on topics from resilience, joy, domestication and healthy hips.

And then I got to the retreat section, featuring spas and meditation centers in places like Costa Rica and Mexico. I skipped those pages since they are unlikely destinations and went to the more-possible selection of sites in the States. Then I landed on one called modern elder academy, and I thought, this is for me, seeing as how I am an elder (71 years old) and I am reinventing myself (modern?).

But it seems that in modern parlance, I am probably more of an ancient because this retreat is geared for elders who are in their forties. You read that right—forties!

When did forty-year-olds become elders?

Has life expectancy dropped precipitously?

I was confused.

I thought we were in a period of having the most centenarians in history. If forty-year-olds are elders, what is someone who have lived more than one hundred years?

Then I remembered back to the late nineties (when I was in my forties) and my first essay was published. I started getting emails asked me to become resident expert from a variety of e-journals and blog sites. At first, I ignored them because I didn’t understand why I was getting them. Expert? What could possibly qualify me as expert?

But the requests kept coming, so I finally responded to one and was told that since I published an essay on forgiveness, I qualified as an expert. One essay? An expert? I don’t think so.

A few years after that, I started working with post-college graduates and realized that in the thirty years since I was twenty, a lot had changed. These young people said things like, “I have been doing (insert activity) for years.” “You are only twenty-something,” I would reply. “How many years can it be?” The answer was usually “two” or “three.”

At the time, I was also teaching knitting to mostly twenty-somethings who were going on two-year overseas service assignments, and during one of my knitting classes, one woman asked if I had been knitting for long. “Not too long,” I said. “Maybe ten years.”

“Ten years!” she exclaimed. “That’s almost half my life. That’s very long.” Perspective, I thought.

Then there was the young man who had meditated for fifteen minutes a day for thirty days and raved about how meditation has changed his life. “That is a good start,” I said, and then added, “Come talk to me when you have been meditating fifteen minutes a day for fifteen years.”

Those are now the people who are hitting their forties, and given their confidence in their twenties, I can see that at forty, they might consider themselves full of wisdom—like elders.

Me? I finally accepted my expert status when I was in my sixties and am just now settling into my status as an elder, at seventy-one.

Reinventing myself

An entry on my affirmation calendar read, I enjoy reinventing myself. It’s like giving my identity a makeover!

When I moved back to Michigan almost nine years ago, I had planned to use my Polish name instead of the English translation—Magdalena instead of Madeline, or Magda for short. I had recently been to Poland and everyone there called me either Magdalena or Magda, and I liked it.

My grandfather used to call me Magdusha—a twist on my Polish name and a term of endearment. I liked that, too.

But I was deep in grief when I moved here, and I forgot to introduce myself as Magdalena or Magda, and before I knew it, everyone called me by my English name.

A few years later, though, I started taking Polish classes at a nearby Polish church, and there I was known by my Polish name. Happy day!

This calendar affirmation took me back to that desire to reinvent myself more in line with my Polish heritage. As I reflected on that identity, though, another reinvention occurred to me—to be reinvented in the image God holds for me.

Isaiah 62:3 came to mind: You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

I remember the first time I read these words as a young adult and felt they were being spoken to me and about me. The image of myself in the hand of God, something bejeweled and beautiful, sparkling diamonds and deep green emeralds. That was how God saw me—as something to behold, someone who took one’s breath away.

Living as if I see myself as a crown or diadem is a stretch. I have usually seen myself more as a dull pewter, so adapting a shinier persona calls for a shift in my thinking.

Perhaps being connected to my Polish heritage is part of that new image because when I am connected to my ancestors, I have a wider and deeper understanding of who I am and where I came from—and a different way of knowing myself.

Perhaps leaning into the image of myself as being held in God’s hand is also key, because that image leads me to live in trust rather than fear. God has me, I tell myself.

Not having a job has reinvented me into a woman with time and freedom to structure my days as I please, to do the things I want and not do those I don’t.

The passing years are reinventing me into an elder, and aging has its own reinvention process.

Speaking publicly about my abuse history has shown me a courage I did not know I possessed—add that to the mix.

These past six months, I have been on sabbatical, resting, reading, writing—and pondering who I will be and how I will live this next chapter of my life.

Reinvented, sparkly as diamonds on a tiara—I want to be brilliant.

–

Don’t judge

“Don’t judge, Aunt Madeline,” my teenaged niece said to me. Although I don’t remember what her mother and I had been talking about or my exact response to her, I can imagine I claimed—perhaps somewhat defensively—that I was not judging. I do recall that my niece rolled her eyes in that knowing ways teens can have.

I admit that I can be judgmental, and even as I defended myself with my niece, I knew she was probably right.

This encounter was at least ten years ago, and her admonition has stayed with me and helped me to be more aware of when I am being judgmental.

Recently, I have found my niece’s phrase, Don’t judge, coming to my mind on a regular basis.

I am trying to honor my mother’s wishes about how she wants to live and die, and I feel judged by those who think I am not doing right by my mom. Don’t judge, I want to say to these well-intentioned people.

“Everyone has an opinion,” I said to a friend after hearing from yet another person offering suggestions about my mother’s situation.

The truth is that I agree that my mother’s situation is precarious, but she is ninety-four years old and she is not a threat to anyone. She wants to live and die in her own home—something I think most people can understand. Who wants to live in a nursing home? or to die in a hospital?

But sending elderly people to congregate settings has become such an accepted practice in our country that the idea of someone staying at home or living with family is considered unusual or even abnormal.

Yesterday, a home health worker told me I need to put my foot down and make my mother leave her home. “Stop harassing my daughter,” my mother said. “I am fine.” She knows what she wants.

I know how difficult it can be to take care of someone at home—I cared for my friend Jim at home when he had brain cancer. Everyday was a lesson in accepting the reality of our situation and letting go of expectations.

I felt judged then, too, by people who had lots of ideas of where I should take Jim for treatment and what kind of food I should be preparing for him and on and on.

I believe that people die the way they have lived. My mother has always been fiercely independent, and she has also always been suspicious of doctors, medicine and congregate settings. My dad, too, avoided doctors and when he had a major stroke, my mother did not call 911. Rather, we called hospice and kept my dad comfortable at home until he died three months later.

I have known several other people who died at home, including my friend Ted, and my neighbors Domenic, Margaret and Mary. A hundred years ago, most people died at home.

I am doing the best I can, so please don’t judge me.

How’s your memory?

In my twenties, I used to tell friends, “When I am old and can’t remember things, don’t say it is because I am old—I can’t remember things now.”

My memory has never been good. While friends could recall what they ate or wore at a particular occasion, I had nothing. Names and faces would only stick if I had spent an extended period of one-to-one time with someone. Otherwise, I would not remember them.It could be embarrassing. Once, I approached a speaker at a conference and thanked her for her comments. I approached her as a stranger, but she knew my name. My confusion must have been evident because she added, “I met you at dinner, last night…with Sandra?” She was trying to jog my memory, but I had no recollection, probably because we were in a large group and I did not speak with her one-to-one. But still, I did not recall her from the previous evening—I cringed.

This may not be scientific, but I believe that memory is a muscle and if it is not exercised, it loses its potency. I think of memory the same way I think of biceps; if exercised they stay strong; if unused they sag and are useless.

My memory did not get exercised as a child. Too many things happened that were better forgotten; my mantra became don’t remember. What was the point of remembering things that were too painful or that others would claim did not happen? I learned to let go.

But, I have paid the price, and now that I am old, I worry about what I can’t remember.Sometimes it is place names. For example, on my recent visit to Phoenix, I visited Old Town Scottsdale, but later, I could not pull the word Scottsdale from my memory. I could describe the art galleries I visited but not the name of the city.

Usually, though, it is people I can’t recall. I don’t seem able to imprint names and faces in my memory, and that can be embarrassing and worrisome. What if this inability to remember is a symptom of something worse than a sagging memory muscle?

In my defense, since moving to Michigan four years ago, I have met many people—and almost everyone in my life here is new in the past four years. I meet new people every day at work, and that adds up to quite a few new people each week. It can be too much.The funny thing is that my memory seems to have tons of data stored in it, and I can sometimes access things I did not even know I had retained. That makes me a good team mate for games that require minutiae (think Trivial Pursuit). My brain is also good at puzzles and figuring out mysteries; I can remember and recall clues and make connections others can miss.

I have many skills, gifts and talents, but a good memory is not one of them.