I recently met with a 99-year-old woman in one of the nursing homes I visit. She was sharp as a tack, or as I sometimes tell them, "You have all your marbles, but I think you know that." They do.
This is purely anecdotal, but people who live into very old age seem to have their wits about them. Maybe good genes, or healthy behavior is a package deal. Not everyone of course. Among the millions with dementia are the very confused. Some, as we say in the trade, "pleasantly confused." Others, distressed and agitated.
But for the aware there is awareness of all.
Here's a thought experiment: When you are old and gray would you choose a sound mind or a sound body, if you could pick only one?
Typically, the woman I met with told me she was the last of her family. That is, the last of the family she grew up with. The brothers and sisters and cousins who shared her childhood to adulthood.
"Everyone is gone. I'm the only one."
She also lived a half-century without her husband who died at 52.
And like others with children, she has buried one.
"My oldest son died. He was seventy-seven, and had a bad heart like his dad."
I ask her about grandchildren, and we get to one great-great grandchild she has seen once.
Maybe in the spirit of her being a grandmother she opens a drawer and pulls out a bon-bon box and offers me a chocolate.
I decline, and she shrugs, "Suit yourself. I'm not supposed to have these."
I don't ask how she got them, since she never leaves the building.
Punting to a photo, I ask, "Is that your great-great-child. That cute little baby."
"Isn't he sweet? I met him once."
After enumerating all her progeny, I make the obligatory joke, "You must need a banquet hall to hold a family reunion."
"Many of them don't know each other."
Sometimes, I ask the secret of how they live so long.
"I don't know. I just wake up every morning. By now if I don't wake up that would be okay too."
So how do you spend your days.
"I read and watch TV."
I spy a few Belva Plain books. My mother, gone now ten years, used to read those.
"Have you been going to the activities?"
"Sometimes the music."
"They say you don't leave your room much."
"My business."
"Yes, it is."
When you're 99, you have simple wishes.
"If only I could walk again."
People in their 80s struggle with the idea of giving up their drivers licenses.
When you're pushing the century mark, a little ambulation would be heaven.
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My book, Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare (Avery/Penguin, 2009) provides a unique, insider's perspective on aging in America. It is an account of my work as a psychologist in nursing homes, the story of caregiving to my frail, elderly parents--all to th accompaniment of ruminations on my own mortality. Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking calls it "A book for policy makers, caregivers, the halt and lame, the upright and unemcumbered: anyone who ever intends to get old."
