Tag Archives: Baby Boomers

Thinking, Learning, Laughing, Crying: Aging & End of Life Reflections

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Bertram Inn Brookline, MA

   PART ONE

     Today’s post reflects some of my recent thoughts on getting older and issues that crop up as we do so.   I will share with readers what brought some of this to the surface over the past week.  Part Two will follow soon, so I hope you will watch for it.  Why not subscribe to be notified of new posts? 

      Like most of you, I prefer to spend more time thinking about living life and enjoying it, rather than what happens when it ends or is starting to wind down, but sometimes events and encounters invariably trigger such thoughts.

       Last weekend was supposed to have been a much-needed getaway weekend for me and my husband.  In most respects it was.  We spent a night at a B and B in Brookline, MA, the Bertram Inn.  We were there once before, a long time ago, and remembered liking  it.  This stay was pleasant, as well.  We had a really nice dinner on Friday night and then spent Saturday at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  On Saturday night we visited a good friend from my early college days.  I had been wanting to visit and see Pamela’s house for some years but somehow it never happened. She visits me frequently on her way to see her daughter and granddaughters.  Pamela’s house is an 1890 structure, filled with furniture and items from Pamela’s mother, grandmother and other family members. She is an artistic person, as was her mother and very individualistic in her tastes and interests.  There was a lot to look at and appreciate.

A Victorian bedroom-not in Pamela's house

     Pamela and I have had many conversations over the years about aging, caring for our elderly mothers and end of life issues.  Our conversational themes have been consistent with our stage of life as members of the Sandwich Generation and reluctantly aging Baby Boomers.  We have shared our challenges and frustrations as caregivers and our joys and our worries about our adult kids.

     Pamela’s mother lived until her 90′s and suffered from dementia during her last years.  Pam cared for her in a sensitive and loving way, but it took a toll and was difficult for her.  My mother died about 10 years ago. She lived in New York City until the last 11 years of her life when she moved into a senior housing complex down the road from my house in Connecticut. In her final year, after various care arrangements proved inadequate, she had to enter a nursing home and she had mild dementia.  My mother-in-law is currently living in a dementia facility and we relocated her from PA at the end of July. She is 87 and is confused a good part of the time, highly anxious but also retains a good sense of humor and makes us laugh almost as often as we cry about her situation.

      I have had a few health challenges here and there, though mine have been relatively minor, thankfully.  My friend Pamela survived a bout with cancer a few years back.  She is now having some other health problems that are frustrating for her and that definitely have an impact on her quality of life.  She has always been one who watched her diet, was conscientious about living in a healthful fashion and has been a vegetarian most of her adult life. She looks youthful and thinks youthfully.  She and I have acknowledged to each other how difficult it is to shift our thinking of ourselves as forever young, strong and invincible, to a more practical picture of ourselves as people in our sixties, no matter how we pretend this isn’t so. Dr. Mary Pipher has referred to our age group as “the young old”.  This does sting to hear, though I believe I am doing my very best to age gracefully while retaining a young attitude.

     Pamela graciously let us stay in her charming house and turned it over to us while she stayed elsewhere. We enjoyed our visit and our further glimpse into her personality.  She has deliberately pared down her belongings and surrounds herself with things she takes pleasure in and that are meaningful to her.  She chooses to lead her life in ways that make sense to her, though they might not to somebody else.  For example, when we opened the refrigerator we were amazed to find a greeting card standing on the top shelf.  She explained that it was such a pretty card that she liked being surprised by it each time she opened the door of the fridge.   I found myself thinking, though, about the fact that she lives alone and that her living space might not be too conducive to aging safely and comfortably and one day might prove to be inappropriate.  This made me feel sad briefly, as I pondered it.  Perhaps it isn’t anything Pamela (or I) will have to face for another twenty or thirty years, but we can’t be sure.  One day we (and/or our children in our behalf) will have to deal with these realities.  Pamela and her mother, Mary,  had shared a home for some years.  After Mary’s death she was forced to sell the house to cover debts but was able to purchase an affordable and attractive home that reflected her tastes and needs. I hope she will be able to stay in her home and be independent for a very long time, but having seen how unpredictable life can be, I hope even more that she will continue to notice and enjoy all of the people and treasures she has consciously chosen to have around her. 

     Following our visit to the Boston area, we stopped in Sturbridge, MA to attend the annual luncheon meeting of the Scottish Terrier Club of America.   Just as we were finishing up our desserts, we got a cell phone call from our daughter that my mother-in-law had fallen and had been taken to the hospital by ambulance.  So of course, we left early and drove to Hartford to be with her. Luckily no bones were broken and nothing serious seemed to have caused the fall.  A night at the ER, rehydration and time to sleep off the drugs that calmed her agitation, and my mother-in-law was sent back to her assisted living.  This was her second trip to the hospital in six weeks.  When the phone rings at our house or our cells when we are out and about, we are beginning to get used to  the sinking feeling that there is a new crisis brewing or already erupting.

     While at the hospital ER, the attending doctor reviewed her history and paperwork with us. Somehow the assisted living had forwarded the information that my husband’s mother is a full code. In reality she has had a living will for some time that instructs (as does mine and my husband’s) that she is a “Do Not Resuscitate, Do Not Intubate” patient. We had supplied copies of the Power of Attorney, the Living Will and Health Care Agent documents to her primary physician and to the facility where she resides.  If the doctor had not thought to go over things with us prior to our leaving for the night, we might never have known that there was an important piece we and the assisted living staff had overlooked.  Apparently in this state (and many others as well), an assisted living or long term care facility must have a doctor’s order for the DNR, DNI status to be honored. My husband is an R.N. and when he thought about this, he realized that was so, but it had slipped his mind or gotten lost in all the details involved in moving his mother to Connecticut. The facility where she resided was supposed to have provided us with a form for the primary doctor but had not done it.  So two hospitalizations later, we learned what to do, took care of it the next day but realized that a simple mention by the ER doc alerted us to something important and perhaps averted a tragedy that might have been contrary to my mother-in-law’s wishes and to our own values and beliefs about people’s right to make end of life choices and to choose to die with dignity.

     Once my husband’s mother returned to the assisted living, we resumed our regular schedules and the rest of the past week was relatively normal.  However, a dear friend whose blog I try to follow regularly, directed readers to a recent blog post by her daughter.  On reading it,  realities having to do with this friend slapped me in the face as a result of  what the daughter wrote.  Her post also generated thought and feelings that were very much in line with those that had preoccupied me much of the previous week.  

    

AUTUMN YEARS DON’T LAST FOREVER

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      When was the last time you called your mother or father and truly listened to what was going on in their lives, to their thoughts, beliefs and even to their worries?  This isn’t a guilt trip I am trying to lay on you.  Let’s hope you will take a look at a few things that might change your thinking a bit.

     Are your parents in their fifties or sixties, or even seventies?  Are you accustomed to thinking of them as forever young, vital and self-sufficient?  When everyone gets together for extended family functions, or when they attend a holiday party at your house, people are always saying how youthful they look.  Once a couple of years ago, your mother did you a favor and answered an urgent call of panic about something you forgot that you needed at work (Nobody else you called first was available) and she drove it to you.  Your colleagues thought she was your wife. 

     When your father proposes a game of touch football in the backyard on a beautiful fall day, he often outshines the younger bunch.  He also amazed all of your friends last month with his break dancing at your fortieth birthday bash.

     Your mother recently changed careers. She is a true Baby Boomer, always forging ahead and trying new things.  Perhaps she went back to school and got certified in a new field, or maybe she quit a job she was tired of and started a business.  She goes to the gym at least several times a week, is writing a novel and she is still the peace and justice advocate she was in her youth. She meditates and she plays Flamenco guitar with passion.

     Your father traveled to Haiti with his men’s group after the earthquake and serves at a local soup kitchen on his day off.  When your kids are bothered by something and you are too busy with your own job responsibilities, they call Grandpa to pour out their hearts to him.

     Mom is always coming up with unique dishes to accommodate your likes and dislikes, or making sure there is at least one interesting vegetarian dish on the table along with the rest of the traditional Thanksgiving fare.  She is also the one in the family who creates special occasions for a gathering of the clan,  despite being pretty busy herself.  She’s the one who remembers everyone with a  card, often an original creation and who finds the perfect birthday gift for you.  Her gifts are rarely commonplace and are always evidence that a lot of thought was put into them. 

     When you have a work crisis, even though you might not have called Mom or Dad for two months, you call them at 8 AM on a Saturday morning and chew their ears off about the latest conflict.  On your last call you were letting them know why you hadn’t been in touch much and how stressed you were.  They listened, as usual asked a few questions,  but mostly couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

     So when was the last time you phoned them for no reason whatsoever except to touch base and hear what is on their minds?  Has it occurred to you that just as you are worrying about the economy, about sending your kids to college, about your next career move, that your parents have worries of their own?  It’s pretty tough, if not nearly impossible for some to picture their vital and vibrant parents traveling from the autumn of their lives to the winter.  If you are very busy raising a young family or climbing the career ladder, you may not feel you even have the time to contemplate this.  Not only are your parents still young and invincible in your minds, but so are you. Time has a way of moving on, though, in spite of our sometimes frantic efforts to make it stand still.

     As you have witnessed when your parents stepped up to the plate and did whatever they could to care for and help your elderly grandparents, life brings changes. That is a given.  It’s part of the natural life cycle.  Most people do not remain healthy, young and capable forever.   So even if you cannot begin to imagine your parents aging to the point that they are no longer as active or as self-sufficient as they always were, it happens to the best of us.  Only a few truly fortunate ones maintain their ability to function intellectually, emotionally and physically as they did at younger stages of life.  Hopefully, your own parents will be an exception, but it’s a known fact that in the next  few years about tw0- thirds of Baby Boomers will be caring for an elderly parent or other relative.  Right now there are approximately 25 million caregivers for elderly relatives in the United States.  Over 80% of these are women and 70% are between the ages of 40-59.  The largest group of caregivers is concentrated within the Baby Boomer Generation, but there were about 76 million Americans born between the years of 1945-1964.  Eventually, a lot of those people are going to need the help and support of their children and other younger relatives.  Generations X and Y might want to do some thinking about this.

          It’s a known fact that with maturity comes a certain amount of wisdom.  The majority of us are not too interested in our family history, what our parents were like as kids and young adults, or even how our parents met and romanced each other. Many do not begin to see their parents as three-dimensional people, or to treat them with the compassion they might bestow on strangers, until they are fairly advanced in age themselves.   Such interest usually begins once we have seen enough of life to put a few things in perspective and often happens when we wake up and notice that our parents are really starting to age.  We then come face to face with both our parents’ mortality and our own.

     Now is truly an excellent time to stop the merry-go-round long enough to step down and have some crucial conversations with your mothers and fathers who are enjoying the autumns of their lives.  Can you commit to doing that soon?  In fact, I will put you on the spot and ask you WHEN?  Can you find a way to involve your kids in these important conversations and a way to create some fun and meaningful interactions for everyone, as well as a valuable life learning experience?

 

     Iris Arenson-Fuller, CPC is a Life Stage, Family, Relationship Changes Coach.   Think of Iris when you think of Big Life Changes, Hard Choices, Second Chances.

     Iris helps people  become become strong survivors and move from sorrow and stress to satisfaction and success.

     Iris specializes in working  with clients who have had losses, widows, widowers, Sandwich Generationers, and with loss issues related to the Adoption Community (Infertility, Adoptive Parents, Adoptees and Birthparents)  Iris  is a strong survivor herself and is a Loss to Light Expert. Contact her: iris@visionpoweredcoaching.com 

www.visionpoweredcoaching.com

Good Bodies, Young Bodies, Middle-Aged & Old Bodies

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  <a href=”http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=4469&picture=slim-belly-and-measure-tape”>Slim Belly And Measure Tape</a> by Petr Kratochvil

 

       I was looking at my blog stats and happened to notice someone clicked on my blog and on one of my poems about my mother, “Gertie Sews”.  http://visionpoweredcoaching.com/2009/04/26/gertie-sews/   This isn’t a poem about sewing at all, but about aging, loss, grief,  good and bad memories,  hope, resiliency and moving on with life. 

      I did a search to see what came up for “Gertie Sews” out of curiosity, and came upon a blog called none other than  Gertie Sews.  I am definitely not a sewer. In fact, I have always disliked sewing (though for some odd reason I love fabric stores, and hardware stores too, which I talked about once in a blog post on this site. )  I practically flunked sewing in the 6th grade when I had to make a blouse and a skirt.  I had my mother’s help and still did a horrible job.  I admire people who can create wearable items out of random  pieces of fabric that to me, have minds of their own and don’t cooperate in the least.  When I have tried to sew  even something simple, my hands  engaged in a wrestling match with  fabric and thread and I have fast found myself on the ropes,  being declared the loser.   Sewing is just not for me.  So it’s unlikely that I would have checked out this blogsite, other than by chance.  I was surprised to find some things on it that interested me.

       I particularly liked  Gertie’s post about body image which quoted from a poem by Eve Ensler, the playwrite, author of The Vagina Monologues.   Gertie’s site is  http://www.blogforbettersewing.com/.  Check it out. She describes herself as “a children’s book editor and a home seamstress with a love of all things retro”.  Gertie has a book about sewing scheduled to come out in 2012.    I will share the same portions of the poem that were quoted by Gertie:

“Maybe being good isn’t about getting rid of anything.
Maybe being good has to do with living in the mess
in the frailty
in the failures
in the flaws.
Maybe what I tried to get rid of is the goodest part of me.
Think Passion.
Think Age. 
Think Round.
Maybe good is about developing the capacity to live fully inside everything.
Our body is our country,
the only city,
the only village,
the only every
we will ever know…

….We live in a good body.
We live in the good body.
Good body. 
Good body.
Good body.”

     Gertie goes on to say in her blog post,  ”This quote said a lot to me. This may sound crazy, but hearing this quote is the first time that it hit me that my body is the only body I will ever have.”  You can click on her blog and read the rest yourself.

     I read that the number one wish reported by U.S. girls eleven to seventeen is to be thinner and that 75 % of fourth grade girls say they are on a diet.  As a mother and grandmother, that is horrifying to me, but this mindless worship of messages the media shoves at us is not limited to young girls, as we well know.  I am afraid I have fallen for these messages myself at times even though I often disdain pieces of a culture that promote them.  I know that on my infrequent shopping trips, without thinking I have walked past a clothing display, found myself attracted by a rainbow of colors and patterns and when I stepped closer to investigate, realized I was in the young junior department.  The clothes that attracted me looked like things I had worn in the past, in the sixties.  I thought to myself, “Hey, that’s my kind of blouse, or my kind of dress”.   I hurried to the fitting room to try on one or two, looked at myself in the mirror and was momentarily shocked and distressed at what peered back at me.  For a couple of brief, but excruciating minutes, I felt swamped by shock and even self-pity that the garment I thought was “perfect” for me either looked ridiculous or even worse, made me look downright unappealing. Fortunately, reason kicked in quickly and I told myself that the clothing in question was more appropriate for my teenaged granddaughter than for me, and that, while I am told often that I look much younger than my age, I surely don’t look THAT young!  Why would I want to?

     I have earned both the body and the battle scars, physical and emotional, that have come from living and surviving to be in my sixties.   I have survived many trials and have lived to tell about them and more importantly, to help others through theirs.   My body has passed through different stages.  During my adolescence, our family doctor recommended to my mother that I take a product called Super Weight On.   I left for college weighing a whole 102 but packed on some of   those freshman pounds due to a poor diet and late night munchies. (It was the sixties, after all!)  My youthful body was resilient and I recovered effortlessly.  I was not familiar with or interested in diets or in what magazines told me I ought to resemble. I was too busy exploring  life.

       As a young mother,  I discovered cooking and baking bread and other goodies.   I had been petite for the majority of my life so I didn’t worry much about it.  I would put on a few pounds here and there, but would quickly lose it and never got much beyond the range of acceptable weight for my height and small bone structure.  Then came various stressors of life.  Caring for my kids and a husband with MS who became almost totally paralyzed caused me to pretty much forget about my own health and weight.  When Kim died, I realized with some surprise that I was down to 97 lbs.  This wasn’t deliberate, but was the result of exhaustion and of never having a moment to focus on myself.    Pounds returned as life resumed some degree of normalcy.  A few extra ones snuck up on me periodically through the years but I yo-yo’d due to my grief journeys after losing multipe family members and friends.  Sometimes I would get very thin and sometimes some extra pounds would make an appearance.  Though I was never seriously overweight,  in my 40′s and 50′s, I finally began to exercise and to take some pride in at least attempting to remain healthy and reasonably fit.   I also had to start to acknowledge that it was far easier at that stage (and continues to be with the passage of years) to accumulate weight .  The pounds are sneaky if you don’t pay attention, exercise and watch portions. 

      My love of cooking, my cultural heritage and my caretaker nature also didn’t make it an easy task to stay slim and healthy. My mother used to say I made enough food to feed an army, but she also said frequently that I fed people “with a full heart”.  I liked hearing her say that.  Finding the the right mix of continuing to enjoy feeding people I care about and caring about them enough to want them to be as healthy as possible, has been a challenge for me, not only given my background but given the varied and sometimes finicky preferences of my family.

     Just as Gertie realized upon reading Eve Ensler’s poem, I, too eventually came to the realization that this body of mine is the only one I have and am going to have. It is mine, to take care of, to enjoy, to respect.  I want to be comfortable in it and not waste very precious moments obsessing about it and wishing to look like somebody else, or the way somebody else thinks I should look.  As with everything  in life, our bodies change with time.  That is a certainty.  The changes are proof that we have mastered (hopefully) yet another phase of living and have made the best of it and are entering a new era. We must focus on our brand new challenges and opportunities.

     This past week I needed to help change and clean up an elderly family member. We got tired of waiting for the ER staff to come to address the needs, so we donned gloves and set about washing and changing sheets and hospital johnny. Just for a fleeting minute, I thought to myself,  “Oh no! Is this what will happen to my flesh, to my breasts and to all of the parts of myself I have come to know well and feel comfortable with?”  Then it  hit me that aging is not really a choice and that I will most definitely change. It might not be as extreme if I make a commitment to keeping moderately fit, but I hope I will continue to like myself.   I remember back so many years ago, when, as a result of reading Our Bodies, Ourselves, along with the member of my local women’s group, I accepted the challenge of going home to examine every part of our own bodies, to learn as much as possible about them, to accept and love who we were.   I won’t lie to you and say I don’t hope I continue to look young and to feel (even more important than to look) attractive.  I do hope…No, I make a commitment  that I will ceremoniously and deliberately take the time to examine and to welcome new wrinkles and to embrace them as part of my new adventure of aging.  We Baby Boomers have forged new paths before this and we do believe we will continue to do that forever. Maybe we will and maybe we won’t. Life is not predictable but how we perceive it and what we do to make it worthwhile for ourselves and for others is something we have a lot more control over.

     By the way, do check out http://www.vday.org/our-work, about empowering women, about ending violence toward women and  about creating  “a world in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather then merely survive.”

Iris Arenson-Fuller, CPC is owner of Vision Powered Coaching and is a Life Stage, Family, Relationship Coach….

Big Changes, Hard Choices, Second Chances

Her particular areas of expertise are:

Loss and Bereavement (Widows, Widowers and those who had had other losses)

Infertility, Adoption (Adoptive Parents, Birth Parents, Adoptees, Teens and Adult)

Aging (Baby Boomers and Sandwich Generationers)

GET SOME ROLE MODELS FOR AGING-STAT!

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     Wake up, Baby Boomers.  It’s time to find our personal role models for aging with grace and purpose.   It’s true that we  Boomers have blazed some trails that were undiscovered or mostly unexplored before we arrived on the scene.  I think that’s why many of us have  completely bought into the fantasy that we are not aging and that “50 is the new 30″ or “60, the new 40″.  We are accustomed to being trend-setters. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that we will manage to set a new trend and stay forever young.    I wish someone would tell that to our bodies.

     Are we kidding ourselves?  I think so.  In the past couple of months, quite a few of my contemporaries have mentioned to me, sometimes with embarrassment and often with  indication of sadness and depression, that their body parts are beginning to let them down.  I am hearing 50 and 60 somethings talk about cataracts forming, about gravity taking its toll,  about wilting, if you catch my drift, about pending knee  or hip replacements,  about paunchiness,  and plain old lack of energy.  I am hearing about numerous surgeries and particularly stents and bypass.   I am still a fairly high energy person, without any serious diagnoses to date,  but I know that when I wake up in the  morning nowadays, I have to move around for a while to loosen up and if I sit too long at the computer, or miss a couple of days at the gym, bones and joints begin to cry out for some kindness and exercise.

     I keep hearing cliches like, “You’re only as old as you feel”.  Well that doesn’t cut it for a lot of us, who suddenly need to work at contradicting the truth our bodies are telling us.  I heard someone say last week that old age is 15 years older than whatever age she is.   I kind of like that, but it still smacks of denial.

     Being realistic and accepting that aging catches up with all of us,  doesn’t mean we have to be willing to fit ourselves into the molds of our parents and grandparents.  The other night I watched a film on CPTV about the Young At Heart Chorus in Massachusetts.  I had heard a little about them in the past.  This was a very moving and enjoyable documentary and was also inspiring for me.  It reconfirmed my goal to age with as much grace  and self-fulfillment  as I can, and to have as much fun doing it as possible.  I am not much of a singer and am a long way from their required minimum age of 73 (The average age of members is 80 and they have some in their 90′s).   They featured one woman who resides in a long term care facility, but has a key to the front door because she often returns from chorus rehearsals very late at night.    One day I would love to  belong to a group like this and to sing my heart out with them!  Most of the members featured have significant medical issues to contend with and the normal range of life’s problems, including deaths of family and friends.  Still they sing with joy and passion and allow themselves to be open to the unfamiliar. These are not old folks who sing tunes that have gone to their burial grounds along with piles of old 78 RPM records and  that only live in the memories and hearts of the elderly. They get down with rock songs and even punk. These are older people who are open to new things and who are committed to growing, instead of just being.  That’s how I want to age.

     I want to collect a “data base” of role models, so to speak. I need people whose examples I can turn to and follow when in doubt, or when I find myself slipping and turning into a predictable, crochety old lady.  I need role models who are determined to squeeze the last drop out of the time they have left and not waste any of it.  I need role models who laugh and love, instead of spending all day lamenting the life they were given, or the life they wanted but never got.  I need role models who are wonderful storytellers and who know how  to enjoy themselves, but who don’t hide that there has been pain in their lives. I need role models who don’t dwell on the rotten meat in the world and who are capable of recognizing miracles.

     I feel very fortunate that I have had some exceptional models who can guide me and model for me different ways of aging than I have typically seen in the past.   I have observed a lot of people in my family who spent their final days searching for holes in happiness and working far too hard to find negativity in everything. 

     On the other hand, there are others I have also watched carefully.  There was Helen, an aunt who lived past 90 and who was an inteligent, bright, kind woman who, along with my uncle, chose to expand her horizons as much as possible and never wanted to stop learning.  When their sons were nearly grown, they decided to go to college. They had run a successful business but finally had the opportunity for a college education. They began to take classes, one or two at a time, and eventually reached their goal and earned their degrees.  My aunt outlived her husband by many years.  She had a stroke and had to  relocate near one of her sons and his family.  I never heard her complain about anything.  She truly liked people and hearing their points of view.  She listened with great interest, obvious enjoyment and lack of judgment.  She was happy to be around younger people  and in spite of some problems with her digestion that had begun to plague her, she would not have imagined depriving herself of going out for a sushi dinner with the bunch of us when we visited. I don’t know that she was particularly fond of sushi, but she wanted to be in the thick of things and we all were delighted to have her there.

     Another aunt, now 92, is weakening, has had multiple hospital admissions, mostly uses a wheelchair and resides in an assisted living facility. We visit her on the way to Pennsylvania to see my mother-in-law.  Charlotte has accepted and adjusted to each new stage with dignity and humor and has been determined to make the best of things. She socializes as much as she can and participates in discussions and activities, but when she is too tired, she just reads and is so glad she can still do that. She is alert and sharp and usually has a smile on her face and a story to tell. She is not a saint, but is philosophical about life. She wonders why she is still here but while she is, she does her best to enjoy whatever she can.

     Then there is Eva, not related to me at all, but my late sister’s mother-in-law. She celebrated her 100th birthday in December and truly cannot fathom how she still happens to be living.  She says that frequently in an ironic and accepting way.  Her living situation is not ideal and she has few people to talk to or who pay much attention to her. She lives 3,000 miles away, but we have delightful conversations on the phone periodically. I never get bored with her tales of times past and her memories of people I have lost, as well as those I never knew. She dispenses  her brand of folk wisdom on a regular basis and it  astonishes me at times.  It is simple and basic but usually very appropriate, thoughtful and helpful. She no longer walks much, is often in pain and yet I rarely hear her complain either.

     A friend I don’t get to see too often but wish I did, is Toni.  It is hard for me to believe she is in her 80′s.  I have been taking figurative notes on her life and attitude since I first met her when she was in her sixties. Toni is truly a model for how I hope to age. She has always been beautiful, youthful  and vivacious to me.  She is a lover of literature, music and the all of the arts.  She is a wonderful mother and grandmother.  She has been through many trials in life, including the death of one son in his 20′s and the cold-blooded and incomprehensible murder of another young son and his new wife.  Toni is a writer, and even though she has moved through a couple of difficult illnesses in the past few years, she continues to write, continues to speak out publicly against the death penalty and to live a life of faith and purpose.

     None of us knows what is in store in the future. The last pages to our own stories are still blank and waiting for us to fill them in. I have every intention of filling  up my own remaining pages with richness and joy.  I can’t control what hardships befall me or others around me, but I surely can control how I perceive them. I hope to cram my chapters full of as many crazy, happy, interesting people and adventures as I possible can.   I am sure some of the pages will have tear stains on them because such is life, but I  would love to  keep reading, writing, sharing, helping and learning for as long as I am breathing.   If I can’t,  I hope I can remember my role models and can emulate the best things  about them.

     So, my fellow and sister Baby Boomers, who are your role models? What do you most like and admire about them?  If you don’t have a few, perhaps it is time to get out there and find some.

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