From The Wine of Life
“What I discovered then, without really understanding what I was discovering, is that to survive we only need food, clothing and shelter but to live we need art.”
Rachel Popowich, drama teacher and Director of the West County Players wrote this in a viewpoint The Wine of Life in a recent issue of the Shelburne Falls & West County Independent (this is only a placeholder for the paper which will come back on line in due time).
Need Art to Live
I am looking for a better quote than this is a paraphrase but recently I read that while we need food and shelter to survive, we need art to live.
Does anything more need to be said?
A common goal, through different languages
I follow British affairs through the wonders of the web. No longer do I have to purchase a ticket and endure international air travel to read The Daily Telegraph or the The Times. And it is food for thought how the same event is reflected in the differing news sources.
What caught my eye today is the announcement of the death of Harry Patch. Mr Patch was the last veteran of the British Army who fought in the Great War (World War I). He died early Saturday morning in England at the age of 111. It is truly the passing of an era and that means much (at least to me for I have studied the war, its causes, circumstances, and effects for all of my adult life). But my ear caught different phrases in the obituaries published in the national press of these two countries who “are separated by a common language”. The British press, and any quotations from his fellow residents of the British Isles, mentioned that he died surrounded by his friends and ”carers” (his two sons died before him). But Americans don’t say “carers” we say “caregivers”.
Is there a difference and if so, do we care? My copy of the venerable Chambers Dictionary gives “a person who cares” as the first definition of a carer and “a person who takes responsibility for another, dependent person” as the second. That’s interesting. A carer can be someone who is “concerned with…or has affection for” another and that emotion does not have to made manifest through action. Caregiver, on the other hand, is someone who gives care.
Which are you? Which am I? Or which in which circumstance?
The Brain
LXXXII. The Brain
The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
—Emily Dickinson
An obvious point
The columnist Thomas Sowell writes today “the point is that health care is largely in your hands. Medical care is the hands of doctors.”
Good point and now the obvious question: how does that relate to aging? How can we talk about caring about our own aging?
The Challenges of Early Stage Dementia
The American Society on Aging’s Aging Today might be published bi-monthly but that doesn’t mean I read it as often or as thoroughly as it deserves. Hence I was struck this week by an article on Early Stage Dementia that provokes more questions and challenges than answers and solutions (unfortunately this isn’t an article that is available to non-subscribers on their web-site). The point that hit me is that, as a result of improved science and medical technologies, we can diagnose dementia earlier and there are some medical interventions that reduce symptoms. What hasn’t caught up is the social, the practical, networks to assist people, their families, and caregivers with this burdensome future. The Alzheimer’s Association, the article reckons, is generally ill-equipped to offer assistance, although a few chapters are beginning support and educational programs. But not enough. The painful irony is that people with a diagnosis of early-stage dementia are far more capable that our system is capable. And what an irony that is.
Can We Create an Earthquake?
Last week I enjoyed a telephone conversation so much I felt I gained a phone friend. And it’s with the very special Lauren Volkmer of ARTZ (Artists for Alzheimer’s). In this rambling introduction to ourselves we used and then repeated various images to agree that there is something very special happening around creativity and aging and creativity and dementia; it has to be a phenomenom of earthshaking proportions. So many wonderful people are working in so many wonderful ways that have deep connections – and Lauren and I agreed we were part of this. But is it a tidal wave or an earthquake? But does it matter as long as it keeps happening?
But the tidal wave seemed to flow through this week’s newspapers here in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first was Monday in that voicebox of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal. There was an article on pyscho-oncology which piqued my interest: “A New View, After Diagnosis“. It is about making life meaningful in the face of fear, in the face of mortality. And from what I read, being creative is, for many people, part of what helps. In my book, creative living in the face of cancer is creative aging at its best.
Another whisper of making meaning is the ad for a set of lectures by James Hollis, Jungian Analyst and Author. He’ll be here at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant Friday July 17th and Saturday July 18th for Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and What Matters Most. I haven’t found a description of these programs but I’ve already fallen in love with their titles.
The next piece that reverberates for me is in Meet the Artist in GoTriad section of The News & Record. It’s on Robert ‘Bob’ Postma and he is a living and breathing tidal wave of…creativity, creative aging, community creation, and everything of great meaning. I’ve got to meet this man!
Reality Intrudes on All of Us
There are benchmarks in time that are shared by all. Do you remember where you were were…when man walked on the moon (I date myself with that one)? In my chosen field it could be do you remember where you were when Ronald Reagan wrote the nation of his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Diease?
Now last week’s paper brought an echo of that in the sudden retirement of Chief Judge Karen Williams of t U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. At 57 at a grand professional height, Chief Judge Williams announced that she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and is leaving the bench so that her legal decisions cannot be questioned. It is an honorable action for her to take professionally; it is a brave thing to do it in public. She was the first female chief judge on the Fourth Circuit and her career has broken many ceilings but this, this public acknowledgement of a private and person matter, is yet another glass ceiling. Thank you, Madam Chief Judge, for reminding us all that a diagnosis is just a diagnosis. Alzheimer’s Disease is a heartbreaking diagnosis but it is not greater than the person themselves. And you are one class act.
Summer Reading
I can’t pretend to read only books about aging but I do confess that my reading tastes include fiction that provides insight into the experience of people who are aging. A recent find is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It came highly recommended; I borrowed from the library of a reader whose taste were eclectic and refined. I found it engrossing. And not just the story of a young man in the Depression-era travelling circus; the old man yearning to be freed from his family and circumstances (the nursing home). If one purpose of reading is being taken places you’ve never been (but recognize when you arrive) then Gruen is a good guide both to the drama of the circus and the backwater of boredom that all too often must be the province of our seniors. Try it yourself!
Poetry tells us the Truth
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver wrote this and no truer truth could resonate more strongly with me after this last week. I like the poetry of landscapes but never realized quite how much the ‘Bard of Provincetown” might know about the work of those in the trenches with our aging elders!
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