MANAGING OLD PEOPLE [8-20-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Irrelevant Musings About Old Age—MANAGING OLD PEOPLE [8-20-26]

 

A few months before he died, long-time friend Bob Hammel, the great Hoosier sports writer, had to move, with wife Julie, to a retirement home, because neither of them could continue to drive. Becoming carless is always a change point for old people. Becoming careless is, too, since falls often take us out of our own homes.

Bob and I had always shared coffee and conversation together, and didn’t see why his change of residence should change that, so I went out to Gentry Park for a morning each week, to drink from the cup that never runs dry, continuing that eternal conversation.

We often talked about the changes that old age brings, and how old people don’t need as much help as younger people think we do. Well, we might need it, but we don’t want it.

Young people think that what we need most is security; we should sit in a chair and never move, so that we don’t fall. We don’t want to fall, but we don’t want just to sit in that chair, either. Unless we feel like it. Then we want to be left alone instead of doing the “socializing” that young people think we need. [I don’t think young people—the under 70 crowd-- are going to come out very well in this column, regardless of what they do.]

As Bob and I talked, I was touting independence, on the theory that any skills and knowledge we suspend, we’ll end up being unable to do at all, so that it’s important to keep doing it so we don’t lose it. Bob, who was a truly wise man, said, “More importantly is the sense of self-worth you get by being able to keep doing things for yourself.”

Well, yes, and that’s where I had the most trouble when I was doing things for my parents when they were in their 80s and 90s, and I was a youngster in my 50s and 60s.

The problem was: they wanted to do for themselves, and they couldn’t. My father was blind and my mother was basically an invalid. Helen and I would work out some plan for them, often at their request, and at the last minute, they’d play fruit-basket-upset. They became both a frustration and a management problem.

Even though it wasn’t exactly my fault—because they really were a management problem—I still feel bad about treating them as one. They, however, probably did not even notice. They were wrapped up in their own emotions and relationships, and I was surprisingly patient. I never yelled at them. But even if they didn’t, I knew I that I was treating them as a management problem rather than as my parents, and that didn’t seem right.

Well, anyway, when people try to manage you, pay attention. You probably need it.

John Robert McFarland