Tales from the Tail End

The facts of elderly life. Elderly people — over 80 that is —know something totally, yes totally, unknown to any other people. They know what it is like to grow old. Doctors may have dens wallpapered with degrees in geriatrics, but they don’t know. Statisticians may have filing cabinets stuffed with survey results, but they don’t know. Managers of retirement communities may have great devotion for us, but even they don’t know. Children, especially children, do not understand the aging of their parents. Their perception is obscured by love, expectation and fear. What it is like to grow old cannot be taught. It cannot be learned. As younger people often assume, it cannot even be imagined. To be known, aging must be lived. This truism can frustrate, aggravate and, fortunately, sometimes greatly amuse the elderly. When we (the author is 88) get together to exchange feelings, experiences, hopes, fears, or whatever might befuddle our doddering old heads, the unknowingness of younger people often dominates the discussion, which usually reaches this conclusion: Talking to them is useless. Then why write about old age, as this book proposes to do? Because, like Mount Everest, it is there! Although readers under 80 may not reach any summit of sensitivity by reading this book, one can hope they will be inspired to anticipate rather than fear or shut from mind that time when they, too, might plant the flag atop the crest and along with those of us now there take glory in that achievement. It is just because old age is a glorious achievement that this book is being written — primarily for the enjoyment, the satisfaction and most surely the recognition of the elderly. All others, especially children and grandchildren, are invited to look over our shoulders to scoff, sympathize or chuckle as they see fit. Indeed, they would be well advised to do so. They need to know what life if like for their elderly loved ones. They need to remember that their time will come! The author’s original hope was to write a humorous book. The elderly do laugh a lot. It helps smother the distress of aging. But aging is serious stuff — not for sissies, as the repeated saying goes. Or, as my grandson John would say when he was a wee lad and I put some tease on him, “’Snot funny, grampa!” On the other hand, when he heard of this book project some twenty-five years later, same grandson said, “Keep it funny, grampa. Nobody wants to read about old people’s problems.” I will try to heed both admonitions, but must tell the truth, silly or sorry or sad. This book is written with soulful awareness of the uncounted elderly who wither away their latter years in sacrilegious, uncared-for solitude in some kind of sanitarium or special needs nursing home, supported only by Medicaid. It is written with a weeping awareness of all those elderly who struggle to live out their lives in some kind of clung-to private residence, too often unknown, unloved, unaided, supported only by Medicare. But this is neither of those stories. These tales are drawn from the growing ranks of elderly who, blessed with some kind of reasonable, still manageable health and wealth have chosen to live out their years in the active, caring, serving environment of a retirement community — any one of which is an incredible laboratory for researching the psyches of the elderly.