Works about aging

Keeping in tune with the theme of the group, I was wondering if any your have works dealing with aging that you drew particular comfort from. STILL HERE by Ram Dass would have to be my pick. He not only aged but had a devestating stroke, which meant he had to give up his cherished independence.

In one chapt., he quotes from Longfellow:

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

I was reading Carolyn Heilbrunis The last gift of time & she was going on about being old is great & I came across a clipping that the last reader had stuck in the book & it was about MS Heilbrun's death by suicide at age 77. So maybe she changed her mind about the benefits of aging? When sshe wrote the book, she was in apparent good health & her family members were all alive.
I prefer May Sarton's journals She struggled with poor health, but was able to describe her flowers, cats & view of the sea.

"Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."

Among many interesting and meaningful things about aging said and written by Samuel Ullman (1840-1924) American businessman, humanitarian, poet

Human psychology is complicated, isn't it. One must wonder if Heilbrunis was overcompensating in her writing in an attempt to talk herself into life. One sees this often in suicides. I couldn't agree more about May Sarton's journals. She wrote a great poem about aging, too. It's called "August 3." Here's an excerpt:

She knew all about fatigue
And how one pushes it aside
For staking up the lilies
Early in the morning,
The way one pushes it aside
For a friend in need,
For a hungry cat.

I have never heard of Samuel Ullman! What an odd, wonderful statement!

t,

You can read about him and also read his complete poem "Youth" in which the above quote appears on bartleby.com. This poem inspired Gen Douglas McArthur who kept it on his office wall and often quoted from it. He also repeated it verbatim on his 75th birthday. Also, there is an Ullman Museum in Alabama.

Thanks, Buddy, I'll check it out.

So I was just wandering the halls, peeking into other groups, and I found this in the Poetry Fools group & thought you might enjoy visiting it too: Poems on Aging

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=18341

You might find this silly, but I'd like to suggest the Tommy and Tuppence books by Agatha Christie.

In The Secret Adversary, they're in their twenties, I think, then in the last title, Postern of Fate, in their sixties or seventies.

Someone else who certainly ages gracefully is Miss Marple.

Yes, desideo ~ When I grow old(er), I want to be Miss Marple! :) Or maybe Amelia Peabody, who also ages in the series from her 30s to her 60s, I think, though not quite as gracefully perhaps. ;D

May Sarton seems to have written a great deal; journals, poems and novels. I will have to start reading her work.

Hi, xenchu ~ My ex-mil reads a lot of May Sarton. She (my mil, not Ms. Sarton) turned NINETY years old on Saturday last! She is a writer too, of essays about the experiences of growing old(er), coming to terms with the past, and loss (including death). If you ever get a chance to read something she's had published, I think you won't be disappointed. Her name is Joan A. Kip.

Mary

"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain." (Louisa May Alcott, 1873)

Thanks Mary! She is not in my public library but I will be on the lookout for her.

My latest passion is exploring and, I hope, becoming part of senior cohousing. I am nearly finished with Senior Cohousing and hope to visit a senior cohousing community in formation soon. Aging in place with a supportive community seems such a sane way to approach the next part of life. This book is a terrific introduction and guidebook on this path to sanity in an insane world.

#13 xenchu, my mil has been published in journals ~ literary and psychological, I think. I'll find out which ones and let you know, in case you are interested.

I also found this for you:

Sister Age.

From Amazon:

"M.F.K. Fisher is famous for her tantalizing food writing, but she's never been limited to the kitchen. Sister Age is a collection of stories - many apparently autobiographical, all drawn from the author's experience and encounters - that reflect a perspective on old age which transcends cliche. With a portrait of an elderly woman named Ursula Von Ott acting as her muse, M.F.K. Fisher "wrote fast, to compress and catch a lesson while I could still hear it," choosing stories containing clues about the true experience of aging. In the author's unique voice, even the most bizarre situations are described with matter-of-fact eloquence. The pieces in Sister Age include an unsentimental account of a stranger's sudden death, a story in which two girls attempt to match their young divorced mother with an old fisherman, a description of the social dynamics in a French boarding house, and even a couple of ghost stories. M.F.K. Fisher observes everything from the horrors of a bad oyster to the wonders of "an ancient oak flush toilet on a raised platform" with rigorous attention to detail, just as she observes and analyzes human emotions, especially her own, with unflinching honesty."

It think it sounds lovely.

Here is the title poem by Ruth Stone about aging from her book In the Next Galaxy:

Things will be different.
No one will lose their sight,
their hearing, their gallbladder.
It will be all Catskills with brand-
new wraparound verandas.
The idea of Hitler will not
have vibrated yet.
While back here,
they are still cleaning out
pockets of wrinkled
Nazis hiding in Argentina.
But in the next galaxy,
certain planets will have true
blue skies and drinking water.

'Works' in a very broad sense - art works as well!

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=42679

I think Dorothy Gilman is also a good author who deals with age well. Her Mrs. Pollifax series is one my favorites.

>8 Storeetllr:

I LOVE that poem, "When I am an Old Woman," you cited because I consider myself to have partly reached that wonderful 'devil-may-care" state of mind, even though only recently in my sixties. A simple example, because of serious glare problems, I wear glasses for glare most of the time, but have a whole range from "fashion," to more conservative "fashion", to my "funky" (is that still a current term, or am I dating myself--but who cares) huge yellow glasses in red frames--Young people sometimes compliment me on them, and I don't care what anyone else thinks. (But that's just one small topic in the whole area of aging.)

Vita Sackeville-West's book, All Passion Spent is a wonderful short book about an elderly woman who decides to live out the final years of her life how she wants to, unlike the plans that her family has made for her!!

On a related topic, I found the book, How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland to have the most humanistic descriptions and interesting details about specific things that happen when people die. At times blunt, but never ghoulish or upsetting, to my thinking.

Working with hospices when a loved one dies also tends to teach these things.

However, when I mentioned this book to a few friends, they all said, yes, they had bought it but hadn't gotten around to reading it. But it's not at all something to put off, at least once you've gotten a copy.

If anything, I was disappointed that it didn't answer all the details about the physical act of dying, which I would have been interested in, but as I suggested, I found it comforting and was very happy to finally have some answers on the subject.

Another Country by Mary Pipher is another well-written book on the aging experience. She is a psychologist and anthropologist and grandmother.

Diane-bpcb ~ I'm going to get How We Die, thanks for the recommendation! What do you mean by "details about the physical act of dying?" You mean what happens to us at the moment of death, or what happens to our bodies after we die? If the latter, have you read Stiff by Mary Roach yet?

Storeetllr ~ I meant in the last hours before death, if one "dies in bed." For example, why, about a half day before dying, did my dad--who was long beyond speaking or communicating--why did his eyes seem to become fluid and lit up from within in a bluish, whitish color--almost like an animated super-monster, only not scary. Is that when they say that someone's "life passes before their eyes" or is it possible, as I felt at the time, that he was looking towards me, vaguely mistaking me for my mother? (FYI, there's no "unfinished business" here; this happened long ago.)

That's the kind of thing.

Hope this isn't inappropriate to put on this site. If you think so, I can delete it.

I have no problem with it. We're all going to be there sooner or later. Everyone I have been with just before they passed were in comas or unconscious, perhaps sleeping, so I never saw anything like that. I don't know of any books that discuss such phenomenon either, sorry.

A new book has just been released - so far only in e-book form which takes all the new research into eating for brain health and encapsulates it into a recipe book.

It is called "Mindfull - over 100 Recipes for Brain Health" and although it was a group effort the author is given as Carol Greenwood PhD, Baycrest.

I have just downloaded it onto my e-reader but am looking forward to its release in book form.

I agree with your observation about hospices, Diane (#20). I was a volunteer care giver for about eight years during the height of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, and was the principal caretaker for three people. I also did intake interviews for persons with AIDS who were asking for services for an additional two years. Between these two activities my thoughts and feelings on daily life, death, friendship, religion, commitment, etc. underwent seismic changes over the decade. Speaking strictly from my point of view, how I wish I had had this experience ten or twenty years earlier. How differently I would have lived my life!

I shall look for How We Die.

Ronald Blythe's The View in Winter surprised me. It is the oral histories of elderly people on growing up and their old age, combined with passages of the author's very, very wise and respectful - non-patronizing - comments. Though most of these people had reached maturity by the middle of the last century their is nothing dated or sentimental about their views.

>2 MarianV: Marion, I understand that Carolyn Heilbrun believed that people should choose their own death, if possible, and it seems to me that is what she did. (Similar to her stopping to wear heels and stockings in her early sixties.) If you know a different story, I'd be interested in hearing it. Here's a link to an article on it:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_9589/

>26 Caco_Velho: Caco-Velho - I'm going to get The View in Winter. I find these collections of the thoughts of the elderly fascinating. Mostly the serenity.

It's perhaps a little broad in its structure to match this discussion as it has evolved, but I must put in a belated word for Lucy Beckett's THE TIME BEFORE YOU DIE.

>26 Caco_Velho: Caco Velho
Thanks for the recommendation. I am enjoying The View in Winter greatly.