The Birthday Girl with ipad and Paco

And it’s shocking.  As much to her as to those who gather around her.   No one in her family has come close to such an extended life. And as a smoker and eater everyone around her assumed she would be one of the first to fall. For years mom was the fresser of her group, the eater.  After the “pause” that doesn’t refresh hit in the early 70s her body ballooned up and the topic of “Eadie’s weight” was on everyone’s lips.  She gained, she lost, she threw her cigarettes away, eventually gained again and didn’t care about the disapproving looks and whispers.  Because all along that journey she’s laughed. All the way to 95.  And she’s still laughing as long as there is someone to tell “a funny”. The other night I heard her roaring away in the middle of the night.  She found the HBO series Getting On on her ipad.  I had been afraid to suggest it, thinking she would find the workplace sitcom set in a geriatric extended care unit distasteful or too close to home. But no.  Who knew that the foibles of a nursing staff encountering the frail elderly would be funny to a frail elder? She continues to surprise me even as we move together into the strange territory of advanced age.  I’m always wondering, Am I helping too much or not enough?  Would she have been better off in a community of peers rather than with me?
It’s hard to know what are the right decisions and who should be making them.

As you can see living with a person of venerable age makes one think a lot about aging. Also the nature of how time is perceived and how hard it seems to be for our society to come to grips with mortality in a welcoming and empathetic way.  I find Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal to be a comforting head on look at important issues of aging from both the point of view of the cared for and the caretakers.  If mortality and time are on your radar read the essay Before I Go by Paul Kalanithi, a young surgeon with metastatic lung cancer.  It’s beautiful.

I’ll end this by saying Happy Birthday Mom.  Once again you’re a trailblazer for me.