Rock On

My sister Kim tells me that her father-in-law, in his eighties, fell in his home and was not discovered for two and a half days. After his children, who live in different states, made frantic calls to a neighbor, he was found bruised and badly dehydrated. He has a First Alert bracelet but refuses or forgets to wear it. A few more hours and he would have been dead.

Is it wrong for me to think that maybe that would have been a blessing?

He is a widower. He has heart problems. He has no friends, no hobbies that he enjoys any longer, no one to talk to, no bright spot in his day except his cat. His mind is slipping rapidly but not so much that he cannot exert his will. He lives in Tennessee and his closest children are in Kentucky and Texas. They have invited him to live with them or at least near them, which he refused. What can be done?

In this case, he no longer has a choice. He will live in a retirement community near the daughter in Kentucky. He may find that living among others of his age and near a child will bring him some comfort, maybe even a spark of happiness. I hope so. His grandsons would like to get to know him better.

But who am I to have an opinion about any of this? I don't know what it is like, so far (knock wood, tocca ferro) to have my body parts fail me, to depend on a wheelchair, to have chronic problems that make my day one endless round of pills and pain a constant companion. I don't know what it is like to lose my mind (well, not in that way, anyway), my eyesight, my hearing (though that is going). What right do I have to say, "Cheer up!"?

John's aunt, who lived to be over 100, announced in her eighties that she no longer had any desire to live. She was physically fit, amusing company, and had no serious health problems. "Let the bombs come!" she would say, "I've lived long enough." She had a strong will to die, she said, but lived for twenty more years, albeit slowly becoming bedridden. Of course, if she had really wanted to die, she would have done so one way or another.

I've heard of a couple in their eighties who bought a puppy. Obviously they intend to be around awhile.

My father, 83, tells me regularly that "getting old is not for sissies, honey." He toughs it out by walking every day. He meets friends for coffee regularly. He is interested in the news of the day. He is studying Arabic and does university courses online (yep, he can handle a computer). Importantly, he has friends in all age groups. He accepts invitations to dinners, weddings and parties. He has aches and pains, and takes a nap whenever he sits down in front of the TV, and he buys me walnuts when I ask for pecans, but all in all, he's in pretty good shape.

So what determines the elderly who seem to give up and the ones who keep rockin' right to the end, ageless in every sense of the word? I don't know, but I intend to be among the latter. Inshallah.