No fun getting old....

[Warped9]

This week (Sept. 24th) my mother will be 80 years old. Mind you she is still doing well for her age even though she's had a pacemaker for the past two years.

She does many things for herself: maintains the house cooks and cleans, does laundry, goes shopping, tends the garden (all with Dad's help) and goes for walks.

Still I can see the frustration in her. She gets a little impatient with herself because she gets forgetful and a bit confused. There are things she enjoys doing and gets frustrated that they don't come so easily to her anymore because she can find it hard to concentrate. When she watches television or a movie she can get confused if characters are talking too fast or if there seems to be too much going on.

She feels overwhelmed when more than one person is talking at the same time. And, of course, she gets tired more easily than before. Having more than a few people in the house for a stretch exhausts her though it's more nervous exhaustion. Then factor in the inevitable aches and pains of advancing age.

All you can do is really listen to her because if you try to offer advice or suggestions she sometimes can feel you are not really understanding her or what she is feeling.

Of course as well as she is doing for her age I also know inwardly she frets some about her own mortality, the inevitable thing when more years are behind you than in front.

Dad is very easy going and patient with her (he's 79) even though he is dealing with his own things. All Dad and I can do is be easy going and understanding and help out where we can. We're thankful she's not dealing with Alzheimer's or something really serious, but simple old age. But evidently it can be trying to get old. And it's little comfort that previous generations were often worse off at a lesser age.

It's a learning experience for everyone because sooner or later we all get there.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

I feel for you, your mother and your dad, Warped9. My mother is in her mid-70s (OK health, but slowing down), but it is my grandmother that I am sad about. She is 93 (and she sure has lead a good, full, active life), but her body is just completely worn out now, and her mind has grown very hazy. When she was in her 80s, my grandmother did all those things that your mother is still able to do; now, while she is someone who very much still wants to get up and do SOMEthing, all she can do is sit. It is a sad thing. My aunt is taking good care of her, but is killing my grandmother to have more and more of her independence slip away as each year passes.

I have never heard her complain once about having to work hard throughout her lifetime, but now she is left to complain simply that she CAN NOT get up and work around her house and yard.

 

[Warped9]

Yep. Dad is still pretty vital and energetic. He likes to work around the yard and go for walks and goes for long bike rides of several kilometers. I often go with him. But he does have his aches and pains, like his knee or hip giving him trouble, and therefore sometimes precludes him from going cycling. Thing is my Dad isn't a complainer (very old school). He has always been one to push himself.

Yet every so often I do notice him slowing down incrementally. He used to go cross country skiing, but stopped about ten or so years ago not long after Mom broke her hip and stopped going with him.

Sometimes my mother will curse in French (we're French Canadian) saying (translated), "Damned old age!"

 

[AMQ]

My grandmother is 73 and she really had a hard life. She's been through a lot, losing a father when she was just a newborn, taken away from her mother and siblings to get a better life with her aunt, working (16 hours a day sometimes) for 40 years, losing a child, husband that was away from home because of his work, the war, tragical death of her sister, hard disease and death of my grandfather etc.
Still she is vital, active, like she is at least 15 years younger.
Sometimes I can feel her grief when she talks about past time, and I realize that most of her friends and siblings are dead, most of them tragically. I can't imagine how that must feel.
One whole world she had lost even before I was born and often she gets news of more dear friends and co-workers that she used to share her life for decades that passed away.
I know that - if we are lucky - to get old enough it will happen to us too but I can't imagine dealing with that. I get depressed thinking about things that happened 2, 5, 10 years ago.
Still people like her to me are example that in life there's no way but forward, she thought me that no matter what circumstances you encounter in your lifetime your life has to have a meaning and a mission.
So after everything she is still active member of our family, years affect her slowly and we just pretend not to make a big deal of it, but help her as much as she needs. Even when there's nothing to do we try to engage her with something because the worst think for anyone is to feel useless.

 

[Warped9]

Advancing age also makes all of us experience something inevitable, that the world you knew and understood and knew how to deal with slips away. They now live in a world they don't understand so readily.

Everything is marketed and aimed at a greatly younger generation so that beyond a certain age group you can feel like you don't fit in anymore and you don't matter. Movies, television, music, clothes, and all manner of goods and services. My parents are intimidated from using an ATM or self-scanning check out machine even though it's been demonstrated that it's easier to use than the TV remote.

Hell, I'm only 51 and I'm feeling it. I remember being in my 20s and thinking I was so smart and that those greatly older were out of touch. I wish I'd listened more because they've been there and they can offer sage advice. Now I look at a lot of twenty somethings and while some of them are really sharp and well rounded a lot of the rest are dumb as shit like I probably was.

I've also been a bit reflective lately. I happened to be looking at some old family snapshots with many of them showing my parents when they were in their prime of 20s-40s. then I come back to the present and see them as they are today. I saw photos from the late '40s when my parents were 19.

One of my favourite pics was from 1964. I was 5 and watching my father and grandfather laughing while they were armwrestling. In '64 my Dad was 33 and my grandfather about 70 and still pretty damned strong.

Dad and his cool '66 Ford Galaxie 500 in 1968.

 

[SVD]

I had a rough patch dealing with the loss of my grandmother earlier this year (which I may have posted about)

Fortunately, in a way, she didn't have to go through the agony of slowly loosing herself to withering of the mid or body, her body broke down relatively quickly (the span of 3 weeks from first heart attack to the second and last) while her mind was still fairly sharp.

I say fairly sharp because she must have been on the verge of one of the usual mental degradations, she was getting forgetful, and her independent streak fighting back made her difficult to get along with at times and filled the house with a noticeable amount of negative energy.

If sometime near or past 2067, when I'm near 80, if my body starts falling apart faster than my mind, I dont know if I could handle it.

 

[Shatnertage]

Those are cool pictures. The car looks like a real classic.

 

[Warped9]

Those are cool pictures. The car looks like a real classic.

Dad kept it until 1973 when he bought a silver '73 Mercury Meteor (kinda like a Marquis). My older brother got the '66 Galaxie and drove it for another year when he bought a '74 Ford Gran Torino. The guy who bought the Galaxie from my brother then drove it from Ontario to Newfoundland and back so evidently there was still life in the old girl.

The Galaxie was black with a red interior and a 289 V8. Man I wish I had that car now. Odd to think that while we see cars like that as classics now back then they were just ordinary rides that we saw everywhere.

Dad's medium blue '59 Ford Custom 500 sedan when we went to visit my grandparents in Quebec around Christmas time in the early '60s. There was a storm overnight and the car had been completely buried and they had to dig out out. I've seen a pic of that somewhere.

Dad's cars over the years:
'57 Ford Ranchero
'59 Ford Custom 500 sedan
'66 Ford Galaxie 500 fastback
'73 Mercury Meteor sedan Silver Anniversary Edition
'79 VW Rabbit L 2dr. (my old car)
'86 VW Golf 4dr. Wolfsburg Edition
'93 Mercury Grand Marquis
'04 Ford Crown Victoria (current)

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

"Most things may never happen: this one will." - Phillip Larkin, Aubade

 

[Shatnertage]

Snow...I remember snow.

 

[Warped9]

Snow...I remember snow.

Yep. So do I. Up until the '70s to early '80s snow in December around Toronto was pretty much a given. Today not so much. Now that I've moved to Brockville my chances of a white Christmas are better than if I'd stayed in the GTA area.

 

[RandyS]

I feel for you Warped. Getting old stinks. I'm only 40, but, having cerebral palsy, my body has never worked right, and now, I'm alot slower than I was twenty years ago. I feel like I went from healthy youth, skipped over healthy adulthood, and slid right into old age.

At least your parents are still around. My mom died seven years ago at 55, her older brother died five years before that, also at 55, and their parents (my beloved grandparents who stood in for my not-so-beloved dad), both died in the early 1990's, both at 66. They both had cancer, and my uncle had diabetes (inherited from grandma). Mom died under circumstances that I still find suspicious.

 

[Kirby]

My father-in-law is 76 and had both his knees replaced last year. Earlier this spring a piece of soffit came off of his house and he took out the huge ladder and climbed up the 25 feet or so to fix it. My mother-in-law toook some pictures (she should have been holding the damn ladder!) and it's pretty amazing to see him way up there.

My father-in-law is one tough guy though, he was a forest ranger throughout Colorado for 20 years and rode horses through the Rocky Mountains for weeks at a time. When we asked why he didn't ask me or one of my brothers-in-law to come over and fix it, he said he didn't want to make us leave our offices to get our hands dirty... ouch!

 

[Mary Ann]

Snow...I remember snow.

Yep. So do I. Up until the '70s to early '80s snow in December around Toronto was pretty much a given. Today not so much. Now that I've moved to Brockville my chances of a white Christmas are better than if I'd stayed in the GTA area.

Isn't that the truth! I love looking at photos of my brothers playing in the snow in Pointe Claire (outside Montreal) in the mid-60s, when there was an incredible amount of snow. Winters in Montreal in the 70s were pretty brutal, too, especially for a little kid walking almost a mile to school. As you can imagine, my kids get NO sympathy from me when they have to walk to school in English winter weather.

I feel for you. My dad just turned 84 and had been very lucky with his health until this summer, when he developed a heart condition and was hospitalised with fluid on the lungs. He's also confessed that he has fallen a few times. My mom died 10 years ago and dad done well on his own, but now my brothers and I are starting to worry, especially as two of us live in different countries (my dad lives in Oakville ON). It's hard for him to suddenly feel his age, as it must be for your mom.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I have one grandparent left, and it's my Grandfather on my Mom's side, and he's 96. He used to be an RCMP officer and had the opportunity to escort the Queen on her first visit to Canada. He used to do a lot of excersizes which kept his mind sharp, and it's still sharp to a certain extent, but he has a bit of Alzheimer's. It's not nearly as bad as my Grandmother's was, but you can still see it. For example, due to his lack of taste, he now refuses to eat what used to be his favourite meals, or even refuses to eat at all, and he's often repeating things. Still, despite all this, he's still rather sharp for a 96 year old.

 

[Warped9]

My mother complains of occasional lack of taste and it really discourages her. We eat whatever she makes and it tastes great yet enough times she can't enjoy it and I suspect she thinks we're just trying to be nice.

 

[Owain Taggart]

My mother complains of occasional lack of taste and it really discourages her. We eat whatever she makes and it tastes great yet enough times she can't enjoy it and I suspect she thinks we're just trying to be nice.

Yeah, it's not easy to see them dislike things they've always liked in the past.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I'm strongly opposed to this aging thing. I refuse to participate.

My mother is 69 now, and doing very well. She's not much grayer than I am and could probably pass for early 50s. She's retiring at the end of this month and is currently looking for part-time jobs or volunteer positions to keep herself busy (I also don't understand the concept of having to look for things to keep busy ).

My father is 70 and a wreck from a lifetime of smoking, drinking, eating poorly and generally being a wretch. He's back on the cancer meds now, and is also still on meds for liver problems and who knows what else. Still, he's doing better than his own father, who was a bigger wretch (treated his kids even worse and once killed a woman in a motorcycle accident, among other things), and who died in his early 60s.

 

[Warped9]

My grandfather passed away at 83 when I was 16 and I don't really know what state he was in just before he succumbed. But the last time I saw him previously he seemed to be reasonably well. Dad will be 79 this coming December and I wonder if he's thinking about that, although he'll never say so aloud.

My grandmother on my mother's side died of cancer at age 64 when I was 7. My Mom has already outlived her mother by 16 years, but I know she's wondering about her own mortality.

 

[Lord Garth]

Those of you in middle-age who still have both parents alive are lucky. My mother died of cancer when she was 50 (she would be 63 if she were alive today). Her sister, who I never met, died from a brain clot when she was 25. My grandmother on that side died at 57 when I was a baby. My grandfather on my mother's side died when he was 71 from colon cancer.

On the other side of the family however, my father's 59 and doing great, my grandfather lived to be 83, and my grandmother is 82 and still doing okay from what I hear. She used to visit every year from 1979-2002 but has stayed in Iran since then. A combination of her health not being what it used to be and my father, brother, and I doing our own things.

I jokingly tell people that depending on who's side I take after, I'll either live to be 50 or 100.

Okay, as I typed all that, it bothered me more than I thought it would. I'm 31 and probably within a decade it would be wise for me to do regular check-ups to make sure I don't get cancer.

Mortality.