Fruit of their years
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy FRUIT OF THEIR YEARS WORLD ASSEMBLY ON AGING IT HAD ESCAPED my attention, and perhaps that of many readers, that the United Nations has. designated 1982 as the...
...Maria Kavanagh, the author, has used a creative way of communicating the discoveries she made and the conclusions she reached as a member of the Catholic Charities' Committee on the Aging in the Washington archdiocese...
...We never felt we sacrificed for the children, even when we did...
...There is the possibility of new and lasting friendships and supportive relationships which the elderly can forge among themselves...
...Organizations like the Gray Panthers, the American Association of Retired Persons, and the Older Women's League organize and direct their voting power and are ignored by candidates and office-holders at their peril...
...The latter stage seems to begin in the 70s and to extend into the 80s and beyond, although there seem to be an amazing number of hale and hearty 80-year-olds living very active lives...
...She provides them with children's sailor hats, insists that they put them on before she allows the bus to start, and leads them in communal singing: "From the back of the bus came Evelyn's shrill voice...
...The statistics on the aging have altered so drastically in this century and have altered in such rapid stages that researchers warn that the statistics they publish, because they are based on a population count five years old, may have changed even as they worked on them...
...The press prepares, and none too soon for the Assembly which will convene in Vienna on July 26...
...The pope's plea demands our serious response...
...The nagging fear with which the elderly live is that of abandonment and isolation in a nursing home, their daily experience that of being treated as less than full human beings, with neither reverence nor respect...
...Life span, however, is probably of less concern to the aging than is the quality of that life span...
...Now suddenly the children are in charge...
...Kavanagh's story has a happy ending...
...People live longer in two such different states as Hawaii and Minnesota-longer than in any other state in the Union-and theories conflict as to the reason...
...She illuminates one aspect after the other of our failure with the aging by means of her fiction-and has written an absorbing book in the process...
...But life span differs dramatically in this country too, and seems to be affected by such variables as economic status, state or region of residence, and physical heritage...
...We cannot leave things to the experts-who may not be experts, after all...
...if present population trends continue they will be 20 percent of the population within a generation...
...Perhaps the pope's mental image is of a family in a more simple and pastoral setting, a family more footed and geographically united than in the American reality, but there are many ways of enjoying the fruit of one's years centered in one's family, even if not under the same roof...
...A blue-haired and bulging woman in a tight sailor hat is in charge of the residents of Valley View on a bus trip to Annapolis...
...She sits at the top of the stairs listening as her children discuss putting her in a home...
...People are living so much longer, and living so much longer in active good health, that the elderly are now designated as "young elderly" and "frail elderly...
...Economic security is of primary concern, of course, and this John Paul II recognized in stressing the obligation of all societies to provide adequate pensions...
...Perhaps the problem is that, as one gerontology student put it to me recently, the average younger adult does not really know any older people as persons and friends...
...Anchors aweigh.' " And so the day goes on, a series of small humiliations endured by the residents of Valley View only because almost anything is better than the monotony of everyday...
...designated 1982 as the year for the World Assembly on Aging...
...It includes works of fiction which enable us to understand what the elderly feel...
...Feisty Margaret Masterson is able to take control of her own life again...
...Positive themes in the life of the aging are also explored in this book...
...She suffers also the diminishment in self-esteem caused by the well-meant but insensitive ministrations of visitors and volunteers...
...we were equals...
...My first notice of it was in a news story telling of the pope's message on Wor|d Communications Day in which he used the approach of the Assembly to plead the cause of the world's elderly and urged that governments and enterprises everywhere see that adequate pensions allow them to live out their lives in dignity...
...But they were always the children, we the adults...
...They were talking about her not as a person but as nuisance, a problem to be solved...
...We are all responsible for the elderly in our families...
...There is one blackly comic incident which would be hilarious if it were not also so painful...
...They are the parents and I am the child This point of crisis, a crisis which has become a common experience, has been reached in the life of Margaret Master-son, the protagonist in a new book with the deceptive title, We Were Once Beautiful Butterflies (Zebra Books...
...In the United States people over 65 are 12 percent of the population...
...Fortunately, there is a growing literature of the aging experience in this country...
...On the other hand a young doctor tells me that in the public and veterans' hospitals in which he has served it is not uncommon to see patients who are old, worn-out, failing in health and mind in their fifties and sixties...
...Whatever the difference in circumstance may be, the psychological needs the pope addresses are the same...
...The elderly are now a political force...
...Still the reader knows that Margaret Mas-tersons are rare...
...Consigned to a nursing home, she suffers the indignities caused by practices meant more to control than to heal...
...We have seen in the news of late so many pictures of men and women gnarled and old in their forties...
...This is only one indication that people are on different calenders of aging...
...It's wonderful," said an eighty-year-old who has seen an activist in many causes, "I move around the country visiting my children and it's never hard to get acquainted-there are always lobbying groups of oldsters to join...
...The average life span of 73 years may be higher now, they warn...
...Margaret Masterson is the victim of a common medical mistake, the misdiagnosis of a treatable physical problem as senility...
...So this was the reason for the spate of articles and surveys on the aging which have appeared lately...
...There is the special relationship which can exist between grandparent and grandchild-a relationship of which many children and elders are robbed by time and distance these days...
...All in all, in Maria Kavanagh's observation, professional agencies and specialists do not come off very well...
...For a few brief years we were all on a plateau of friendship...
...Come, let's all sing.' She began, 'Anchors aweigh, my boys...
...He struck a more throbbing nerve when he adjured his audience to hold the elderly in reverence and respect and reminded them that Scripture describes old age as a time of fulfillment when man and woman can rest from their labors surrounded by family, enjoying the fruit of their years...
...Attention, everyone, Everyone...
...Life span differs dramatically depending on whether people live their lives in affluent or poor Countries, whether in Europe and the United States or in South and Central America, for example...
Vol. 109 • July 1982 • No. 13
