Covarrubias is a licensed educational psychologist and lives in Bonita.
As I turn 75, I have never had such an intimate realization of how our declining years affect us, what this stage of life means. The saying is our 70s are young-old, our 80s are old-old. Believe it.
I have watched bedside deaths of many people while three of my immediate family ed from dementia. One upside is that I saw what loving kindness looks like.
Despite participating in a UCSD Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center longitudinal study, and each year receiving a “no decline” assessment of cognitive functioning, I experience small, humbling losses of age. My friends experience something similar, as we openly laugh about not being able to find the word, or someone’s name, or where our glasses/phones/keys are. Our nuts and bolts are slowly wearing out. We all see our decline in various ways: slowness in response time, tiredness from fewer and fewer activities, deaths of friends and relatives.
We speak about trusts and final arrangements, but seldom about the details. Why talk about details when discussions may lead to who can we depend on when we need help? Will it expose our disengaged families, how estranged our relatives are from us and each other? Or how those in the next generation are struggling in their own lives, often depending on us to assist them? Our friends are our age — isn’t it folly to think we can help one another climb ladders to change smoke detectors or scale backyard hillsides to fix sprinkler leaks?
Recently, I have begun speaking with my husband being in our dying years, to bring home the point, to help us realize our brief time is nearing its end, to help us decide how we want to live in this present. I used to say “declining years” to describe the future, always a decade away. As we approach the end of this decade of our lives, there is sweetness if we dedicate ourselves to it. If we accept it.
My only remaining sister was recently diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. I see her struggle to make it through even one day without tears and catastrophic reactions. I feel as though I can see what she is fighting: losing oneself.
Is the crux of the struggle to come to grips with the loss of identity? How do we create meaning for ourselves in these dying years? Is it time to focus on being instead of doing?
The irony of paradox: This old age dilemma is freeing. We the hard times of the 1960s, times of significant cultural clashes that brought about progress as well as backlash and violence. I thought I wouldn’t live to be 50.
Now we smile as our music transports remembrance and emotions. My husband and I are past worrying about gray hair now turned white, have pared down our suits to a few for weddings and funerals, now storing that trekking stick for use as a cane. We loan wheelchairs and walkers. We embrace soft wrinkles.
Our consumption patterns have dimmed, along with our eyesight. Our hearts have opened more to each other. We can speak more honestly, more intimately, without as much defense with each other. We affirm each other’s value. We listen better and try to offer and accept help more readily.
My husband’s temperament is calmer than is mine. We both face our human challenges, and I struggle more with finding life’s balance. I therefore make conscious efforts to focus on what is important in our lives and to honor that.
We still exercise regularly for fitness, endurance and balance. We are lucky to have developed habits of bodily movement and good eating patterns. Even though we are more awkward, have less flexibility, we enjoy what remains of our health and vibrancy. Our neighbors know us as we walk up and down hills near home.
We remain active, volunteering on projects, helping others when we can, contributing to important causes.
But as we read our daily newspapers and watch nightly news, we see tremendous dangers threatening our cities, countries and the world. The climate crisis may create the cataclysmic storm whose powerful waves exacerbate the divisions between us, glorify an us-or-them mentality, seek to justify the ends by any means, and put us at ultimate war with one another. Our world may be turning much more brutal and deadly.
It doesn’t have to be that way, but forces are coalescing to take us there. I won’t have to face it full force. Pay attention: Younger folks will.
