Aging and Illness

Those of us who have been living with illness or a chronic condition (as either the ill or well partner) understand too well the deals we make with life and with each other. The biggest one is that illness must now be a part of our relationship and our choices. We can't take the commonplace for granted. Illness won't let us. The ordinary comes with the caveat - if I'm feeling well enough....

It is estimated that in the US, by the time we reach age 65 we will have one illness or disability, and by the time we reach 85, we may have 3 or 4. And if both partners are aging, the complications of managing multiply. Can we both stay in our home? Do we, and can we afford, help? Live-in help? What about assisted living? And what if one of us needs a nursing home and the other doesn't? What difficult choices!

A few weeks ago an article in the New York Times discussed the issue of aging and illness. It's a good read, and has, imho, a great title:

In Sickness & In Heath by Paula Span

Here's how it begins:

"For several years, the professor and his wife, who has Parkinson’s disease, managed in their house in Cambridge, Mass. But two years ago, finding living on their own too difficult, they moved together into an assisted living facility.

The professor, retired from M.I.T., was in good health and didn’t need personal care. So I wondered: Why not move just his wife, whose mobility would deteriorate, and visit her regularly from his own home?

He sounded puzzled at the question. Live apart? “That never occurred to me,” he said. “She’s my wife.”

As is often the case, though, assisted living proved only a temporary solution. His wife developed intensifying dementia and needed more care than the facility could provide. In November, at 85, she moved to another facility in a neighboring town. The professor stayed behind in assisted living. Now 87, he is living alone for the first time in 55 years."

When it's Too Late to Change Your Relationship

My father has had a desperate year.

Before he turned 83, he went swimming every day and sat by the pool for hours "schmoozing" with neighbors from his condo building. He bragged that he was the youngest guy in his synagogue and therefore often had the honor of carrying the twenty pound torah scroll. He told stories about the old days -- spending his war years on a battleship in China, playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn as a kid, running errands for a nickel for the Murder, Incorporated gang that owned his neighborhood, and meeting my mother and being overcome by her dark beauty.

This year, he has lived more in rehab facilities than in the condo he shares with my mother. He started falling. He fell four times within six months. One day he got into a car accident. He had successful back surgery to insert metal pins along his spine to brace a few fractured discs. His pain is waning and his spirit is returning. But he has 24 hour home health aide coverage and needs to be shepherded when he turns over in his hospital bed, takes a shower, or tries to walk.

His voice is now an old man's voice, hoarse and tired. It often fades by the time he gets to the end of a sentence. He remembers everything clearly but just loses interest in the details. The thought of getting back into the pool and swimming again keeps him going.

My mother is holding steady with her afflictions and her medications. She carries on with reading her mystery books and tending to the building's library. Her social network consists largely of her doctors, the doormen, and her brothers. She cooks meals and sorts through paperwork. She lets the aides do everything else for my father.

My parents orbit around each other. Sometimes they collide in affection; other times in hostility; but mostly in neutral cooperation. This pattern is no different than the one they existed within for the past fifty years.

I watch with a heavy heart. I know that they will never find a love that has at its core something sublime instead of just complacency. I see that they will never find the others hands hidden in the mountain of ashes left by their disappointments in each other.

It's too late and they are too sick to change a relationship this old.