Yesterday was my reading day at the Mansion, I read from a mystery about a murderous 88-year-old lady, I read the Wonky Donkey, I read a Shel Silverstein poem, and a sad poem by a child in the Great Depression.
I also read from the works of Bruce T. Marshall, a Unitarian Universalist minister who works with the elderly and writes about them (In Later Years: Finding Meaning and Spirit In Aging). I am learning in my weekly readings and in my Thursday Meditation Class that the Mansion residents very much want to talk about aging, community, loss and death.
These conversations are powerful, they are neither maudlin nor depressing. They are very important, to them and to me. I feel I am doing something that is more worthwhile than I imagined.
Yesterday I asked about identity, the condition of being oneself and knowing oneself.
I read a story about one older woman’s struggle with identity and asked the normally taciturn residents talk about their own experience with identity.
“The big surprise for me,” said B, “is that I am no longer in charge of anything – my family, my bills, my house, my meals, my job, shopping, my car, my money, my dogs or cats. No one will let me open a door or carry a bag from the store.”
As she aged, she said, her identity was taken from her bit by bit. People want to help, she said, but there is almost nothing left of her life that she controls. It leaves a big hole, she said, she wanders and feels sad.
“It’s hard to be seen as useless,” she said. “I remember when I cooked the meals.”
M said that people no longer speak directly to her or ask her questions. They assume she is deaf or too confused to know what she is being asked. She can’t remember the last time anyone asked her opinion about anything.
“My family comes to take me out to dinner once in a while,” said T, “but nobody talks to me during dinner, except in loud voices as if I was a child. The waitresses never looks at me or ask me what I want. Nobody wants to know what I think about the world, they think I know nothing. Somebody else always answers.”
How does she deal with that?, I ask. “I speak up, I get loud,” she said, “but most people I know just learn to be quiet. I am learning to be quiet. What’s the point of talking? Nobody cares what they think, we are invisible, even to the people who love us.”
One of the residents said it was still a shock to her to see that the people in her family were no longer her family. They had their own families, and she was no longer really a part of it.
Well, I asked, what is your purpose, what do you see as your identity now?
“I’ll be honest,” she said, speaking slowly but with feeling. “I think my identity now is to cause as little trouble as possible, to not disrupt the lives of other people, and to die quietly and without a fuss…I have no other identity now.”
One of the quiet women in my writing class said she cleaned and vacuumed at Mansion, she dusted every surface every day. It was important to her, that was her identity once – she kept a spotless household for a husband and five children – and it was the way she kept sane at the Mansion.
It got quiet in the room, we were supposed to meet for an hour, but the conversation stretched the class to two hours. I felt drained, I could only imagine what they felt. They were eager to resume the conversation next week. Many are coming to Meditation Class on Thursday.
It got very quiet in the room. Unless you count the sound of breathing softly. I read them stories of older people who re-invent themselves, who reach or mentor or volunteer. I know health is a factor, some people can’t do those things, but some people can.
Perhaps, I said, some of you can be of use to people in the community. Alice said she would love to volunteer in a food pantry. I don’t know if she can. I’ll find out.
I like the idea of finding “spirit” in aging. I want to talk more to the residents about it when I see them next.
When I told the residents I was 72, they were all stunned. They thought I was much younger than that. They want to talk more about that next week. It is something for me to think about as well.
