Age Well

People are living longer. Baby Boomers are reaching ages far beyond from what used to be retirement. The population of elderly is exploding as the government scurries to find solutions to Social Security, Medicare and those still affected by the 2008 stock debacle.

In the play, “I'm not Rappaport,” the protagonist establishes his office on a park bench in Central Park. His daughter, dissatisfied with her father's activities, tells him to either move in with her in Great Neck, enter a nursing home, or continue to live in Manhattan but attend a senior citizen center on the West Side. To this Rappaport replies, “So my choices are either, exile, Devils Island, or kindergarten.”

It takes no great stretch of imagination to lament the pains of being old. Out of deference to the elderly, the Torah exhorts us, “In the presence of your elders, stand.” Being old may once have been considered a comfort and blessing, but no more.

Patsy Neal, education teacher, tells the story of her grandmother who is placed in an old age home. 89 years old and confined to a tiny room she became dependent on a walker when gradually her legs begin to give away. Grandma learned to attach a bag from her walker, which remained close by all times. In it with the vestiges of her old days. Disconnected fragments of a life that was taken away. In that small pouch for the final artifacts retained from my lifelong accumulation of courts. There was once a comfortable lounger, expensive delicate China, and a safe comfortable environment. But the furnishings of her home were sold or given away as she no longer needed them where she lived in the nursing home. The car was given away when her vision began to fail.  And now there’s grandma lived in a nursing home the final bits of her life or thrown into the small bag which never left her walker. A few odds and ends were her sole possessions, an alarm clock, a small radio, assorted needles, some thread, pieces of sewing…

With sudden clarity her daughter, Patsy Neal, cried as she realized that her grandmother was a bag.

Aging is a biological and situational fact. It is also a function of attitude. There are times when we are guilty of making our parents invalids.  Rappaport was right.

Consider Jonas Salk who first developed the polio vaccine and later on this life worked to find a cure for AIDS.  Nolan Ryan, who retired as a major-league pitcher to pitch to children on Sunday afternoons. And who led the Maccabean revolt against the Syrians but the elderly man, Mattathias? In our communities the remembers in their 70s and 80s and even 90s who are younger than some teenagers I have met.

Dr. Wilder Penfied, A Canadian neurologist, wrote, “Disease and disability makeover take man at every age and force them to withdraw from work. But the capacity of the human brain for certain purposes often increases through the years… At 60 the body has passed beyond its greatest strength and physical demands should be lessened and changed. But the brink quite often is ready for the best performance…”

The lessons of the Salks, Neals, Ryans and even the Maccabees is clear: Give me a chance.