On the first anniversary of my mother’s death, I was traveling on a small ship in Greece, motoring the last leg from Crete to Hydra. I’d booked the trip because I needed to keep moving and exploring to hold the aching sadness of the past year at bay. A year of remembering my mother’s long and vigorous life—and at the same time, fighting off memories of her last days and excruciating death. People should not have to be in charge of dosing their mother with morphine until her body finally gives out.  

But I’m not a wallower. I tend to get busy when the going gets rough and feelings get tough. Staying home, stuck in my routines, my ongoing “organ recitals” with friends, and worries about daily responsibilities, felt stifling. I set out on this trip hoping for distraction, but I also sought time to reflect and remember her, preferably in the close vicinity of others, who are not family, and around whom I would be less likely to crumple into tears.  

My mother and grandmother took me on my first international trip when I was 23. In our rental car, reminding whoever was driving to stay on the left side of the road, we explored England and Scotland for a couple of weeks, even meeting the British pen pal I’d been writing to since the seventh grade. One day, climbing up the steeple of a church, my mother and I peered down at the park below where my grandmother sat on a bench waiting for us. I shouted down, “Hello Grandma!” and we laughed when a half-dozen gray heads lifted at the call. One morning, when Grandma slipped a breakfast roll from the bed and breakfast into her pocketbook “for later” and explained that all the folks on the AARP trips did this, we followed her lead. We came to call it “AARPing” food to snack on while sightseeing.  

My grandmother died at 94, just before my first child was born. A career and raising kids took over my life and traveling was planned around hubs like Disneyland, Legoland and the San Diego Zoo. Finally, after I retired, I treated myself to a river cruise in Europe and the travel bug sprung from its cocoon. When my mother was still alive but no longer traveling, I visited London again, this time on my own. When I reached the park across from Big Ben, I pulled out a snapshot of her and my grandmother and found the same spot from which I’d taken it all those years before. I lined up the tower of Big Ben with the old snapshot and photographed both, superimposing an image that would help keep the two most important women in my life close to me.  

A few months after my mother’s death, I was changing planes in London and there in Heathrow I was stung by the permanence of their absence. In the hustle and din of the airport though, it was a quiet thought, a tiny stab of sorrow. I acknowledged it and trusted that those stabs would continue to soften over time. Before I left the lounge for my connecting flight, I AARPed a scone and jam, a banana and a granola bar for the next leg of my journey. Thanks, Grandma. 

I booked the Greece trip as part of a need to surround myself with people on the first holidays without my mother. I’d hiked with friends on her birthday and spent the fall and winter holidays with my sons. So that I wouldn’t languish at home on the first anniversary of her death, I hoped that being with a group of travel companions would keep me preoccupied and entertained, bump my mind over to another, lighter track.  

And it did. My new travel mates, most of them older than me, shook me out of my mid-60s slump and my gloomy self-talk about the pains and indignities of my own aging. They unfolded their walking sticks, slipped on knee braces, and in one case fell off the gangway into the Mykonos harbor, but they all kept going. Pushing ahead, just the way my grandmother and mother did until the end of their lives.  

It had been a year of firsts. First time driving by my mother’s house without her in it. A sushi order without her favorites. My birthday celebration without the woman who birthed me. And it had been a year of lasts. The last time we would see her furniture before it was carted away. The last time we would pick blueberries in her yard before the house sold. The last time I would use the house key to unlock her door to say goodbye to her space, the place we gathered as a family, the place where she died in front of a picture window out of which she could no longer see. 

I’d mentioned the first anniversary to two women early in the trip, and both checked in with me on the day. I choked up briefly when I replied, but I was able to tell the truth. “It’s getting better.” Then, our talk turned to the calmer weather expected on Hydra and I felt solace. Unless we go first, we all lose our mothers. Only the gods have eternal life.  

Katherine Briccetti is a Pushcart-nominated essayist and author of the memoir, Blood Strangers, a LAMBDA Literary Award Finalist. Her writing has appeared in Dos Passos Review, Short ´Edition, Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts, Under the Sun, upstreet, The Writer, Bark, Los Angeles Times and several national anthologies. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast in 2007. She is at work on a novel about race and relationships, which takes place in the middle of America in 1968. www.katherine.briccetti.com 

Leaving a Legacy of a Safer Society

Ever Heard About Generation Jones?

The post Traveling Past Grief appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

Most of us can create a litany of reasons why we aren’t always happy about aging—achy joints, sagging faces and bodies, suffering incontinence and insomnia, and just feeling weary of the world sometimes. Though never the homecoming queen, I have garnered my share of backward glances over the years. So, it was shattering to realize that aging could also mean I would become invisible. 

But as time passes I have begun to consider invisibility an asset and even, I dare say, a super power. Imagine, we have been gifted an invisibility cloak that allows us to move about in the world any way we please. It frees us up to wear what we want, say what we want, and be who we want because no one is really paying attention. In her book, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a wise, older woman telling her: “We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.” 

Held in the right perspective, this invisibility thing can be very empowering. In the end, the best we can do is practice acceptance. I said this to my dermatologist recently who wistfully asked, “Can you evangelize that?” Easier said than done. Acceptance is the counterpart of grace and as a lover of that particular word, that’s what I’m striving for. I have realized that most people will experience feeling invisible at some point. While we can’t control how or if others see us, we can take the initiative to see and acknowledge others. We just might make their day! 

After losing her husband in 2021, Marilee Clarke began writing her book on navigating grief. Excerpts from the book (still in progress) often appear in this magazine. Her passions include mixed media creations and traveling the world every chance she gets. She currently splits her time between Issaquah and the California desert, enjoying the best of two very different and beautiful locales.  

Let Me Count the Ways I Love You

Still Laughing

The post Let’s See Each Other appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

    My younger brother who stepped out of time before me. Since I can no longer measure myself against him, it makes him seem older in a way. Who can be older than someone absorbed by time? Someone who has transcended time? 

    the lagoon water 

   brother drowned in 

  also gone 

  “We were graduates,” I’d joke, “of the University of Sylvia and Jack.” 

  The Hirschfield’s were a strangely paired Jewish couple in the West Bronx. She was kind, outgoing, deeply religious. She worked as a bookkeeper. He was a hotel maintenance man, who related to all of us as strangers. More like a boarder than a father, he’d come home from work, greet no one, go directly to his room. 

  Paternal abandonment forged a bond between Aryeh and I. We’d fantasize about rafting like a couple of Huck Finn’s to some fatherless refuge somewhere. Our bond, however, yielded to the stresses of clashing personalities, family dynamics. 

   Aryeh was blessed with mom’s outgoing nature, with her gift of drawing people to him. I was, sad to say, his polar opposite. A dark-spirited loner like Dad, I put people off. (If the old man noticed, he kept it to himself.) 

    The death of family patriarch, Moses Joseph, a Hasid whose extreme orthodoxy rubbed off on Aryeh, pushed our relationship to the edge. I’d be on my way to the park on the Sabbath with bat and ball, when he’d run up behind me, shouting, “God will punish you!” A little Jewish Taliban, who, happily, did not grow up to be a big Jewish Taliban. In fact, he became, in later years, a distinctly open-minded Jewish Renewal rabbi in Oregon (in his study were pictures of Groucho Marx and Ramana Maharshi), a member of Rabbis for Peace.   

    In our teens, there was a cultural shift. We became art house movie-goers, thrilled by Ingmar Bergman and Vittorio De Sica. We especially loved Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, forever enacting the chess game between death and the crusader, intoning death’s few chiseled lines in English with Swedish accents that made both of us howl.   

   I miss the laughter of brothers that rose up, it seemed, from the floorboards of our shared bedroom. It closed over the fissures in our relationship, as did our serious talks about Kafka. The suffering of a son permanently estranged from his father. Our story. 

    It might have been wiser to talk about the alienation of brothers. For when the laughter ended, when our Kafka conversations ceased, my envy of his popularity (reborn after his long season of fanaticism) returned, along with his justified anger over his big brother’s absence of affirmation. 

    Old age is when we all go for our PhDs in reflection. What a brother is, first of all, is an eruption in time. My first memory is of the day program I went to with my cousin Ruthie, at whose house I was staying when my mother was off giving birth to Aryeh. 

   At her day care, a dark passageway was constructed against a wall curtained at both ends. We were made to walk through it. Though not normally afraid of the dark, the journey filled me with a primal fear.  

    Only years later did I realize that that liminal journey in space contained my dread that time was now altered, shadowed by a tiny stranger’s birth. I’d no longer monopolize time. I was condemned to share it. 

    Like many brothers, we shared it poorly. Like many brothers, we eventually shared it at a distance. In his late teens, he discovered drugs and relocated to San Francisco. I discovered writing and remained in New York for a while, before heading off to South America to find something exotic to write about. We both drifted, but not toward each other. 

    I awake nights thinking of him. Where, in the unfathomable emptiness that we take to be death, has his spirit found a home? Or is it wandering still? Or am I the one who is still wandering, inwardly and outwardly, from my home to the river, from one haiku to another, toward some elusive center? 

    It is second nature for an octogenarian to fixate on his losses, having had so many of them. With Aryeh, it was what was lost before his death that haunts me. We would meet on occasion over the years. He’d come in for periodic visits that became frequent when our mother was failing. Or I’d make occasional visits out to the West Coast, where he was working through the various stages of his rabbinical career. Visits that were often intended as pilgrimages of reconciliation. 

    When we remembered to take deep breaths, there was sharing. Mainly, a mutual interest in the broken state of the world that somehow did not include our relationship. We’d discuss the race question. We couldn’t escape the awareness, even as children, that those hollowed out corpses in striped suits could have been us. Emmett Till, the black 14-year-old Chicago boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, was a victim we could easily identify with. A more complicated identity, especially for Aryeh, were the Palestinians. A rabbi, he was at times prone to giving Israel the benefits of doubts I did not have. But his ability to try to see the occupation through Palestinian eyes when he traveled to the West Bank I held in high regard, as it meant extending himself far more than I had to as a secular progressive Jew. 

    I keep searching for him in all the old places where his voice can be found, where thoughts were momentarily shared, but never a life shared. 

    Once, when he was stoned, he said, “I feel like the donkey chasing the carrot. Sometimes I get close. But the carrot is always beyond my reach.” 

    Chasing after the dead Aryeh is a little like that. The feeling sometimes of getting close. But never close enough.  

    These words. My skinny candles. Lighted. Doused. Lighted again. 

Robert Hirschfield is a New York-based writer and poet. He has spent much of the last five years writing and assembling poems about his mother’s Alzheimer’s. In 2019, Presa Press published a volume of his poems, The Road to Canaan. His work has appeared in Parabola, Tricycle, Spirituality & Health, Sojourners, The Moth (Ireland), Tears in The Fence (UK) and other publications.     

Reflections on the Good Life

How Will You be Remembered?

Moving Closer to Your Family

The post Searching for Aryeh: An Old Man’s Journey appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

You’ve retired after more than five decades working as a nurse and with a degree in gerontology. You know how society treats old folks, especially elderly Black women. You’ve done your fair share, perhaps more than your fair share. 

Isn’t it time to slow down? Find a nice beach, buy a condo and live the good life? 

Most folks might settle comfortably in just that kind of existence. After all, most of us slow down as we age, right?
Who would want to be in a place where, if you had to pee, it would be outside in -30F? 

Most folks aren’t Barbara Hillary. 

After retiring, despite her health challenges, Hillary began exploring. She chose some of the world’s coldest regions, which found her dogsledding in Quebec and photographing polar bears in Manitoba, Canada.  

Hillary developed a taste not only for adventure but also for the physical exertions that those adventures demanded of her.  

The more she explored, the more she discovered she could explore, despite the limitation of her lungs. She was charmed and energized by the people she met during her travels and moved by how the changing world was affecting them. Her passion for the wild outdoors and its people led to a deep concern for climate change, which threatened the landscapes she loved.  

Hillary wanted to do something that would bring more attention to the survival challenges she saw firsthand. 

At an age when many retirees might prefer a warm, sandy beach and an umbrella drink, Hillary decided to hike to the North Pole.  

She prepared hard for a year, secured funds, worked out on weights with a personal trainer, and learned to ski. She had to learn how to pull her own heavy sled.  

The first really bad moment was when the guide evaluated her before she could ski to base camp.  At that point, after all the training, the investment of time and effort, the guide could give you the once-over and decide, nope, you can’t go. 

He did allow her to go and history was made.  

According to Hillary, “The worst of it was having to pee when the temperature was below 30 F.”   

Finally, Hillary raised her hands in triumph after planting her ski poles near the door to Santa’s workshop. She was the first Black woman ever to do so.  

In that moment of euphoria, all the doom and gloomers that she had encountered, all the naysayers were washed away, she said. 

That was April 23, 2007. She was 75.  

After her record-breaking accomplishment, the awards and accolades flowed in.  

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution acknowledging her achievement in 2007. 

The National Organization for Women awarded here the Woman of Courage Award.  

Isn’t that enough?  

What’s enough for someone like Barbara Hillary? 

Most folks might happily settle down after such a crazy-mad successful adventure and rest on their laurels. Write articles, write a book, speak about it. After all, no other Black woman had done it.  

Most folks aren’t Barbara Hillary. 

Four years later, at the age of 79, she hiked to the South Pole. On January 6, 2011, Hillary once again raised her ski poles in triumph in the cold isolation at the bottom of the world. She had come a long, long way from the swampy, humid South Carolina lowlands where she had been born. 

But wait, there’s more.  

Armed with the knowledge and education of what her preparation for these incredible excursions had given her, Hillary used her newly acquired legendary status to become a sought-after speaker. She founded and became the editor of The Peninsula Magazine in New York. She worked tirelessly to raise awareness about climate change. 

Hillary dedicated her trips to her mother, Viola Jones Hillary, who had moved her family from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, to New York City. It was the Depression, yet Viola believed that the city would afford her two daughters a better chance for success.  

Barbara Hillary has long credited her determined mother with teaching her that the world didn’t owe her anything. The lesson to go after what you want and to do the hard work to get you there is woven throughout Hillary’s life.  

Perhaps above all, Hillary didn’t believe that the aged should simply be a profit source for the nursing home industry, as she put it. As a result, Hillary did far more than just crush these notions—she rose as a symbol of what could be achieved as we age into our final years, what determination and will could accomplish.  

Saddled with ailing health, Hillary made a final trip to Mongolia in 2019 to visit the nomadic tribes famous for herding wild reindeer. This would be her final adventure, before passing at the age of 88. 

Shortly after she died, Hillary was inducted into The National Women’s Hall of Fame.  

Funny, smart, focused, and fierce, Barbara Hillary continues to be an example of what you can do no matter the limitations placed on us by society, by naysayers, and by ageist beliefs—how to finish strong. 

Julia Hubbel is a prize-winning journalist and author of two books. An adventure traveler, she thrives on exploring the boundaries of the heart, soul, spirit, and humor. Horizons beckon for Hubbel, who launched her passion to take on challenging sports in the world’s greatest places in earnest at age 60. 

Scouting for an Outing? It Might Be Time for an Adventure …

Alene Moris is Ready for Action

Running Down Boston

The post How to “Finish Strong:” The Incredible Journey of Barbara Hillary appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

Not much distance from the car to the restaurant’s front door. Do I pop the trunk, lift out and assemble the transport chair, help my wife from the car then push her? She’s actually been feeling pretty good today. Just hold my arm, my good arm, she suggests. We’ll walk. I’m easily convinced, partially because I believe her, but perhaps more so because the cumulative effect of caregiving is exhaustion. I’d originally thought of my assistance as lending a helping hand, but over time, realized I was the default caregiver.   

We make our way toward Good Burger laughing at our meandering steps. Just a few years back, we were two highly active, nonstop, straight-ahead adults. Now look at us, a pair of oldsters excited by the prospect of reaching the front door of a burger joint.   

As we enjoy the food, I find myself thinking about the 19 steps my wife will have to manage when we return home. Physical therapists have taught her what to do. Face the railing and hold it with both hands. To ascend, step up with the inside (stronger) foot. Stabilize. Transfer her weight and bring up the other foot. I repeat the instructions and add a little encouragement while stationing myself immediately beneath her, serving as a kind of barrier from a potential tumble.
We finish our meal and begin making slow, fairly steady progress toward our car. Tackling the slight incline, our pace becomes labored and deliberate. We stop. Linda reports that her legs, the knee, the bad hip, her back, everything, hurts all at once. She’s hoping I can bring the car. 
Unfortunately, that would mean leaving her precariously upright, standing alone in the middle of the lot. I’m feeling like one of the jugglers I used to see on the Ed Sullivan Show rushing back and forth trying to coax a series of vertical sticks, each supporting a spinning plate. Back and forth, tweak this one, wiggle that one, else the plate it holds will tumble. Linda just might have a similar trajectory if I leave her to gravity’s whims. Like Sullivan’s performers, my task is to maintain a constant overview, then zero in where I’m needed most. Car, Linda? Linda, car? The routine is a metaphor for portions of each day.    

I remain at my wife’s side. We take deep breaths, minute steps, silent breaks during which we just hold one another. And finally, somehow, we reach the car, then the house, making our way up the stairs. We are done in but not done. She’ll need a bit of assistance getting ready for bed.     

Before my mother and my mother-in-law moved to the Kline Galland Home, a wonderful senior living facility, each of these ladies stayed with us. Linda’s calm empathetic manner was remarkable. It seemed obvious to me that the number one skill a caregiver could offer was patience. Neither of these women was made to feel like a burden. If anything, Linda made sure they realized we were honored to have them in our home.   

My caregiver tipping point for overextending good intentions reflects my energy level, my own relatively minor, but annoying age-related health issues, and how long the day is getting. At 79, I’m not the spry multitasker I may have been back when. I’m a better caregiver when I allow time for myself, for my own interests, or just for some peace and quiet.   

At first, I tried to deal with writing projects while Linda slept. But she wakes often and there are endless interruptions. Writing requires concentration. I began scheduling personal time, with the caveat that flexibility is foundational.   

We tried in-home caregiver assistance to cover my absences and to help in general, but, even with insurance, were only able to afford coverage for portions each day. You request specific hours and dates in advance when contracting with an agency, but Linda’s medical appointments were constantly updated depending on her needs and her doctor’s concerns. The caregiver schedule was in a state of sustained flux. Experienced, energetic help was appreciated. Unfortunately, not all caregivers met our expectations. I became a conduit, passing along requests and explaining how best to handle various tasks. It was easier for me to complete a task than to explain how we wanted it done.   

Maintaining the house, helping Linda, and trying to pursue a few of my own projects seemed to keep me conflicted. Eventually, our kids convinced us that it was time to let go of the home we’d cherished for more than 30 years. It made sense to move to an assisted living facility, a place with a full-time professional staff and maximum coverage.   

Preparation for the move, downsizing, packing and selling the house competed with Linda’s health issues and treatment. But eventually, we settled into a small, friendly, well-run facility. Being here is a relief. Caregivers stop by, straightening up our small apartment, asking Linda if she needs anything. Showers are offered according to a schedule. The housekeeper cleans each Wednesday. Medication Aids show up twice a day, providing the latest version of Linda’s ever- changing prescription regiment. This small army of associates has reduced my load and taken on some of the more essential aspects of caregiving. But, of course, if you add up the total time they spend with my wife during the course of a day, you don’t reach 90 minutes. I cover the other 22.5 hours. Not a complaint, but an observation. 

Aging is an industry as well as a process. There are thousands of devices designed to assist with tasks. Reachers, gizmos to help a person put on socks, to steady shaking hands as they attempt to manipulate eating utensils, there are an assortment of bath chairs, floor-to-ceiling poles that, when stationed properly, are remarkable for getting into or out of bed. These and more allow people to continue taking some responsibility for their own care. And, of course, the more people can do for themselves, the less aid caregivers have to provide. You cannot see it, but I’m winking. 

Know what I am equipped to do best? Help my wife find ways to continue pursuing her passions. Bring flowers from the store so she can arrange them. Sort through boxes of photographs, framing, hanging, arranging, rearranging, transforming our new apartment to an approximation of home. It will never be our old house, a place she misses even more than I do, but we can and do turn up our creative juices to make sure the new digs reflect who we are. 

Linda spent 30 years caring for the shrubbery and flowers that surrounded our home. Now she is in the process of planting a new garden on our balcony. Trips to the nursery—I drive, she mans the GPS. I push the wheelchair, she holds the pots in her lap. We’ve got a system. As we explore the flowers, I’m thinking that caregiving has its gratifying moments. Still, I’m glad to be holding onto the wheelchair. It just might be keeping me from falling over. 

If my caregiving succeeds at all, it is because my wife and I, known for our balancing act—Linda is a semi-retired perfectionist, while I’m prone to the “good enough” school—manage to interrupt our occasionally charged debates with reflective corrections and laughter. An observation: You can lament life’s progression or deal with it. We do our best to keep our good fortune in mind.  

During our five decades of marriage, Linda has gotten me through my own health challenges, as well as through life in general. I’m a writer and an entertainer. For many of those years, she booked the shows and she continues to edit my essays. I am a hopeless dyslexic and she’s perfected my spelling several times a day since 1970. 

Growing old together means sharing the good and bad; the ratio fluctuates. I take a certain satisfaction in being my wife’s caregiver. It’s more than a responsibility. When I do it well and feel appreciated, the frustrations are held at bay and I bask in satisfaction.   
Still, you are never completely off duty. Late at night when I’m on the edge of a dream, I remain sensitized to my wife’s pain. I’m on alert, always. Occasionally I hear her calling out. You okay, I whisper, only to learn I’ve been dreaming. She’s awake, sitting in bed, and wondering why I’ve asked. 

Charles E. Kraus is a writer, entertainer, and memory improvement teacher. Charles is the author of Baffled Again … and Again, a collection of essays. His most recent book, You’ll Never Work Again in Teaneck, NJ (a memoir) is available in local libraries and on Amazon. 

Caregiver tax credit would help hardworking families 

Every day more than 820,000 Washingtonians perform a great labor of love: caring for older parents, spouses, and other loved ones so they can remain at home—where they want to be. 

Caring for a family member or close friend is one of the most important roles we are likely to play in our lifetime.  However, hardworking family caregivers often spend their own money and may risk their jobs to help their loved ones. In fact, caregivers spend an average of more than $7,200 a year of their own money—making it harder for them to afford groceries and pay bills. Many have had to cut down their work hours or quit their jobs because of caregiving responsibilities. 

That’s why AARP is urging Congress to pass the Credit for Caring Act. The federal tax credit of up to $5,000 a year would put money back in the pockets of eligible family caregivers and help defray the costs of caring for a spouse or other loved one with long-term needs.   

Washington state needs family caregivers, and they need a tax credit. Find out more at www.aarp.org/caregiverswa 

This story was made possible by funding support from AARP Washington and BECU. For more information, tips and resources for family caregivers in Washington state, go to: www.aarp.org/caregiverswa.   

Protecting Your Marriage While Caring for a Loved One

Look for the Helpers, Part 1

The post From Helper to Caregiver—An Observation appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

We know from the scientific literature and common sense how social connections typically decrease as people retire from day jobs, children become enmeshed in their own lives or even move away, grandchildren move on, and relatives, friends, neighbors die or simply are unavailable to sustain a treasured friendship. I remember watching my parents’ friends, who I’d known since youth, pass away, move away to be nearer their children, or lost interest in lifelong friends. 

My parents lived into their 90s, so it’s not too surprising that my mother often said, “All my family, all my friends are gone.” She became the oldest person she knew and the oldest and only person alive from her birth family. 

This, of course, is not news. But I’ll wager it’s not something most people think about or plan for. It is something I heard not just from my mother but also from participants in our decades long Adult Changes in Thought or ACT study, a long-running cohort study of aging. 

SOCIAL CONNECTEDNES: A POTENTIALLY REVERSIBLE RISK FACTOR FOR DEMENTIA 

 According to the recently released Third Report of the Standing Lancet Commission on dementia, social isolation is a potentially reversible risk factor for dementia. 

The Lancet is perhaps the most renowned international medical journal. It charters working commissions that work on important international health issues ranging from hepatitis, high blood pressure, global infection threats, to obesity, and including the early work relating health, energy and climate change. 

I was invited to convene with international experts on aging and dementia to write The Lancet Commission Report on Dementia: Prevention, Intervention and Care. We published our extensive first report in 2017. Unlike other Lancet commission reports that are often “one and done,” the commission has now published three widely circulated reports, which reflect great increases in the population of older persons throughout the world coincident with the ongoing, vast expansion of scientific efforts and knowledge about dementia. 

Summarizing what is currently known about prevention of dementia is a key feature of the Commission’s reports. One of the third report’s remarkable findings was naming the 14 potentially reversible risk factors which, if avoided or  improved, had the potential to  reduce lifetime risk of dementia by almost half. Infrequent social contact appeared in the second report and was supported with more detailed evidence in the third. Based on published research, the commission concluded that reducing social isolation or, conversely, maintaining frequent social contact had the potential to contribute 5% of the about 45% of total possible risk reduction from all 14 factors. I hope to write about some of the other 13 risk factors in future issues of 3rd ACT. 

Maintaining social connectedness, being mindful and, if needed, proactive about the tendency for social connectedness to decline with age is what I wish to highlight now. 

BE AWARE AND BE YOURSELF AS YOU AGE 

My dear mother was an accomplished pianist and on and off again a church organist. Formerly, a lab technician, her second career was working in our school district’s library support center. In retirement she was quite happy playing her piano, reading and puttering about our family home and eventually a duplex apartment in a local senior community. She enjoyed being with younger people, and, as she saw her social circle contract, she redoubled efforts to foster new friendships, participate in study groups, seek out younger new friends, go to concerts, recitals, even attend the Portland Opera for as long as possible. She was not a natural social butterfly but even as her mobility declined due to severe osteoporosis and arthritis she reached out to others. She didn’t deny the impacts of disability but rather presented herself as she was. She didn’t bemoan or deny her challenge with short term memory as it declined but instead generally made light of or even joked about the recent events and even familiar names she didn’t remember. She stayed true to who she had been and had become and expressed the lifelong interest in others and events that she always had. I’m sure, as an experienced dementia research scientist that she avoided some of her late in life cognitive decline by staying socially connected. 

As her son, I’m grateful for the example she provided. It’s not too surprising now that aging science recognizes the value of maintaining social connectedness as a potentially reversible way to reduce dementia risk and cognitive decline. But… 

THANKS MOM! 

Eric B. Larson, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. He was Co-Principal Investigator of the SMARRT trial and formerly Vice President for Research and Healthcare Innovation at Group Health and Kaiser-Permanente Washington. With colleagues he co-founded the long running Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study in 1986. He continues research through the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and other projects and has participated in The Lancet Commission on Dementia since its inception. With co-author Joan DeClaire he wrote the well-received book, Enlightened Aging: Building Resilience for a Long Active Life.  

The Surprises of Aging: Friendships, Creativity and Satisfaction with Life Can Flourish

Something Greater Than Ourselves

The post Stay Connected to Reduce the Risk of Dementia appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” 

In the 4th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote these words spoken by his teacher, Socrates, in a work called “The Apology.” In it, the 70-year-old Socrates, having been condemned to death by Athenian officials for corrupting the city’s youth with his philosophy, justifies his beliefs and values and his decision to share them with others as a teacher. In short, he was leaving a legacy by making a public statement about his authentic self. 

Socrates’ lofty impulse is actually one that many of us can relate to as we age. More often we may find ourselves reflecting on our own lives, the choices we’ve made, and the lessons we’ve learned––and wanting to share them with our family and others we love in the hope that they might benefit from our insights. 

One way we can do this is through the creation of an Ethical Will (EW). While not a legal document requiring witnesses or notarization, an EW can be as powerful and meaningful as a Last Will and Testament in clarifying our wishes for others’ lives.  

A Centuries-Old Tradition  

The concept of an EW goes back centuries and spans civilizations. The Ancient Greek tradition of writing an Apology, or explanation, of one’s life was later adopted by the Romans and continued throughout Medieval Europe. At the same time, Islamic culture promoted the idea of the Spiritual Will to record personal principles for determining how best to disperse one’s money for charitable purposes. In modern times in Japan, with the rise of a very large elder population, some older adults are writing “ending notes” as a way of leaving a moral legacy for their descendants. 

The most notable and sustained EW tradition can be found among the Jewish culture of speaking to one’s children or writing them Legacy Letters detailing the best way to live a life. Such examples are found in the Hebrew Bible and throughout Jewish literature. 

What all these traditions have in common is the impulse for self-examination and self-evaluation of one’s experiences for the ultimate benefit of others.  

Some Elements of an EW 

What ideas might you include in this precious document? The answer: Anything that you hold dear.  

For example, you can describe your memories, secrets, regrets, funny stories, accomplishments, and mistakes. You can offer to others advice, encouragement, acceptance, and forgiveness. You can summarize your core beliefs, express your gratitude, and challenge others to achieve their potential.  

To accommodate such a variety of possibilities, an EW can take many forms and include such elements as lists, drawings, photos, and even scrapbook mementos. Moreover, it doesn’t even have to be a written document but can be audio- or videotaped. 

And, most important of all, legacy writing needn’t be shared only after its creator is gone—it can be handed down right now.  

The “Forever Letter” 

That last point is the focus of the work of Rabbi Elana Zaiman, author of The Forever Letter: Writing What We Believe for Those We Love. She describes this form of Jewish Legacy Letter as one “that is meant to deepen, heal, or uplift our relationships.” 

What makes her approach so original is that a Forever Letter (FL) doesn’t limit the interaction being strictly generational but rather can be intergenerational. 

As Zaiman explains, it’s “a letter anyone can write to anyone. Parents to children. Children to parents. Grandparents to grandchildren. Grandchildren to grandparents. Mentees to their mentors. Mentors to their mentees. Students to their teachers and teachers to students. Siblings and spouses to one another.”  

Because an FL’s nature is fluid, its value lies in acknowledging the present moment rather than some future, post-mortem discovery. 

“A Forever Letter is meant to be shared now,” Zaiman says. “Anyone can write an FL at any time, for any occasion and for no occasion…. [It] is about connecting deeply with the people we love more than it is about passing on what we deem we need to pass on. 

“It’s important to say what we want to say before it is too late,” Zaiman continues. “No matter how old or young we are. It’s not just an elder that can die suddenly. It is any of us. And why wait to share how we feel about the people we love and care about? Why wait to repair what is broken? We must act now. We never know how much time we have.” 

Imagine surprising a recipient with your Ethical Will, Legacy Letter, or Forever Letter. Or choosing to share it on an important occasion such as a birthday, graduation, or wedding and creating a ritual around presenting or reading it. The act itself can emotionally impact everyone involved. 

“Why not be in the relationship now?” Zaiman asks. “Why leave important words that we want to share for after we die?” 

That being said, she believes that we needn’t be intimidated and stymied at the thought of such important personal sharing. 

“I encourage people to be themselves,” she says. “To not expect themselves to be Shakespeare. To write the way they write, in their own voices. To talk about themselves, the person they are writing to, and their relationship with the person they are writing to, to be honest and real and present.” 

Some Important Caveats 

No matter what language we use, Zaiman cautions us to think not only about what we share but also about our motivations for doing so. 

“We must be careful as we write legacy letters. To not command from the grave. And to not write a letter essentially asking that others live the lives we never did. We must remember that the people we are writing to are their own people with their own lives and interests and they must live their own lives, not the lives we had hoped to live and never succeeded at living, not even the lives we succeeded at living.” 

Living Your Legacy, Too 

There’s one additional value in recording your moral legacy, and in a way it can be the most important one of all. As Zaiman puts it, the act can be “a transformational experience, taking us to our ultimate truth, our authentic self.”  

In other words, this formal process of reviewing and explaining our lives can be the catalyst for revealing who we have been and who we are, not only to others but also to ourselves. And this revelation can inspire us to make some changes in the goals we pursue and the ways in which we spend our time pursuing them. 

In other words, as Socrates might agree, the examined life is worth living—and sharing. 

[Sidebar] Want to Get Started? 

Consider answering these questions: 

What was the most wonderful moment in your life? 

What was your most difficult moment and how did you deal with it? 

Who has/have been your greatest teacher(s)? 

What quality do you most value in a relationship? 

How would you describe “meaningful work”? 

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned so far? 

What would you want to be remembered for? 

Jeanette Leardi is a Portland-based social gerontologist, community educator, and author of Aging Sideways: Changing Our Perspectives on Getting Older. She promotes older adult empowerment through her popular presentations and workshops in journaling, memoir writing, ethical will creation, brain fitness, creativity, ageism, intergenerational communication, and caregiver support to people of all ages. Learn more about her work on her website. 

The Importance of Legacy Planning

Letter Writing: A Lost Art

The post Leaving––and Living––a Legacy appeared first on 3rd Act Magazine.

Since moving to Seattle from New York City in 2017, 86-year-old abstract painter Elinore Bucholtz has had solo shows at Joe Bar on Capitol Hill, Caffe Ladro in Edmonds, Fresh Flours Bakery on Beacon Hill, and Equinox Studios in Georgetown. Capitol Hill Art Walk showed her work at Chophouse Row, Starbucks, Ada’s Technical Books and Cafe, and Roy Street Coffee & Tea. Last year alone, her paintings have been displayed at Capitol Hill’s Kismet Salon & Spa, she was featured on the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog and in Northwest Prime Time, and she was named Seattle Refined Artist of the Week. 

Not bad for a former New York City public school teacher who started painting after retiring at age 56 and enrolling in workshops at the Art Students League of New York. 

Born in British Palestine in 1938, Bucholtz and her father Samuel, mother Rena, and older sister Edna experienced a harrowing, three-month journey emigrating to America During World War II. “The United States government thought that German general Erwin Rommel was coming through the desert to take over,” she explains. “They told us to get out as fast as we could.” 

According to Bucholtz’s late father, her mother’s stomachache prevented passage on the first available ship—a lucky break in hindsight, considering the ship was bombed and sank. Instead, the family booked a boat out of Port Said, Egypt, traveling first by train some 450 miles to Cairo when she was two years old and then another 125 miles to Port Said. 

“My father told me the station was bombed as our train left Cairo,” she adds. Her family sailed on three different ships—skirting open ocean combat and rough weather, according to Samuel—before arriving at Ellis Island. “My father said he held me up to see the Statue of Liberty, but I don’t remember that.” 

Her family lived in New York for a few years before moving to Arizona and eventually settling in California. Bucholtz majored in English and American Literature at the University of California Los Angeles and moved to New York City, where she taught junior high school English for 25 years. 

Bucholtz moved to Seattle to be closer to her son, Sam, and daughter-in-law, Ireland. Her two-bedroom Capitol Hill apartment serves as her residence and painting studio, while a storage unit in Seattle holds roughly 250 original paintings. She recently shared some insights into her experiences in life and art. 

“New York had everything I wanted.” 

“I was 23 when I moved to New York in 1961. It had everything I wanted—opera, concerts, museums, and Broadway. I found a Manhattan studio apartment I could afford. My first job was [teaching English at a junior high school]in Queens. I took several buses and subways to get to work. I was late every day. After a few years, I found a job teaching at a junior high school in Manhattan, closer to home.” 

“I never dreamed of making art before I retired. I didn’t even doodle.” 

“When I retired, I asked myself what I enjoyed doing. I enjoyed visiting New York City’s art museums and seeing other artists’ work. So, I decided to try it myself and I got hooked. I’ve been painting for 30 years. I never dreamed of making art before I retired. I couldn’t draw anything when I was young. I didn’t even doodle.” 

“Color and shape were enough.” 

“My early paintings were representational and figurative. I painted people and objects. I haven’t done those in years. A couple of years into taking workshops at the Art Students League of New York, I was tired of drawing or painting leaves, trees, or fruit. I tried abstract painting, just shapes and colors, which worked for me. I was very comfortable with it. Color and shape were enough for me.” 

“My paintings dance or sing.” 

“I think of my art in terms of ‘abstract lyricism.’ My paintings have motion—almost like they dance or sing—rather than just sitting there. Today, all my work is abstract. I use acrylic on canvas because it dries quickly and I can paint over it if I make a mistake.” 

“[Art] just happens.” 

“I met a young man who asked me how I came up with ideas for what to paint. I couldn’t say because I take a brush, put paint on the canvas, and then see where I should go. It’s not anything I work out ahead of time. It just happens. On the other hand, my paintings are much freer than I’ve seen other people do. Maybe that’s because I didn’t go to a formal art school.” 

“A psychic told me I would live to be 105 years old. Who knows?” 

“At one point, I had an operation, and my son, Sam, who had moved to Seattle many years before, came to New York. He told me he wanted to take me back to Seattle with him. He works hard and I couldn’t expect him to go back to New York every time I had a health issue. My son and daughter-in-law live about a block away. I usually paint the first half of the day before I go out for a walk in the afternoon. I had friends over for ice cream cake on my 86th birthday last November. I went to a psychic once and they told me I would live to be 105 years old. Who knows?” 

Seattle journalist Todd Matthews has written for more than two dozen print and online publications in the past 25 years. His work is collected online at wahmee.com. 

Be a Part of It

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He has late-stage Alzheimer’s. He cannot walk, feed himself, toilet himself, bathe or brush his teeth. He cannot catch a ball or clap his hands or understand directions. He has little to no understandable speech. But he communicates with a smile and facial expressions and he can follow one direction—he can kiss. 

One day a baby and mom were visiting at the residence where David lives in memory care. When I brought David over, he was mesmerized, and his smile widened. And David, who could barely speak, said “That’s a baby!” I decided then that I would find babies to visit with him. 

While searching for babies I came across an article describing the use of weighted life-like dolls for dementia patients. David now has his doll, and he perks up with her—engaging, smiling, and kissing her. Other residents, entranced by the doll as well, sometimes “kidnap” her and she has to be rescued. 

Finding real babies was difficult. I wrote, phoned, texted, and visited infant care centers, graduate student housing, and mommy-and-me support groups. I described the joy that seeing babies gave David and asked for their help in recruiting babies.  

But, when I took my search closer to home, I found my neighborhood has several events that bring families together. At a street party I met a young couple and their baby, 12 months old. I told them about David and asked if they would be willing to visit. To coordinate the timing of the visit, we took nap schedules into account, both the baby’s and David’s. 

I met a second baby on a walk with a friend. We noticed a young man taking a baby out of a car. I nudged my friend asking her if I should ask him about visiting David. As she said “why not?” I broached the idea of visiting David and, before I could get the words out, he emphatically said “Yes” explaining that he looked for opportunities to bring people joy. 

The parents of these two babies had no experience knowing anyone with Alzheimer’s. I have been so touched and warmed by their responsiveness. 

The third baby is a young toddler, the daughter of my private caregiver. 

The visits range from ½-hour to an hour, every four to six weeks. Upon seeing the babies, David lights up with smiles. Even with his significant decline David responds with joy. We end when either David or the baby is fatigued. 

Lastly, I was so focused on having babies visit David that it did not enter my mind to have David visit babies. It is now spring and the weather is warm and sunny. David’s caregiver and I wheel David to the adjacent university housing playground where, like magic, between 3 and 3:30 p.m. babies and toddlers appear, to David’s delight. He was nonstop smiles during our last outing. 

David, pre-Alzheimer’s, often engaged with babies by making funny faces. He was a gifted portrait artist, a very witty cartoonist, and a well admired jurist and author of judicial curriculum. 

I cannot stop Alzheimer’s. It is a terrible feeling to be so helpless and powerless in the face of this disease. But I can make life better for him and finding babies for David has done just that. 

Phyllis Rothman is a licensed clinical social worker, retired from private practice in Beverly Hills after decades of practice.  

Judge David M. Rothman was a respected jurist at the Los Angeles County Superior Court. He is the original author of the gold standard reference work about judicial ethics, the 791-page California Judicial Conduct Handbook. Judge Rothman spent much of his career training and teaching ethics and courtroom skills to other judges. He recently passed away at age 87. 

Nutrition and Dementia or Alzheimers

The Four C’s of Alzheimers

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Who’d want to get old if this was what lay ahead?  And yet as a tennis playing, 60-year-old with plenty of older buddies running round the tennis court and competing for their club or indeed their country, I knew the moribund images I was seeing were only a small part of the aging story. I bought myself a camera, found a photography tutor and set out to document the good news—the sportsmen and women who show what the aging body is capable of (a lot!) and who compete at the highest level in the sport they love. 

Bad news however makes a better story than good news. Not only was there little visual evidence of these older athletes in the media but few people—on my side of the pond at least—had any idea that such championship competitions existed. When I started showing my pictures in exhibitions or presentations and talking about the people I’d photographed, I was met with incredulity. Where were these events being held? Why weren’t they publicized more? How could you go and see them and even take part in them yourself? “Why don’t we know about them?” I kept getting asked. Yet everyone had gloomy stories to tell about older folk in decline, needing care, to the detriment of both family and nation. “Burden” was a word you heard all the time. There was one trajectory ahead for us as we get older, it seemed, and it was an incontrovertibly negative one. 

So, by contrast, I immersed myself in the world of good news, focusing on sport-related things older people can do. The achievements of the elite athletes I discovered is jaw dropping: I’ve seen women in their 80s run 100m in just over 16 seconds and men age 80+ run it in just over 14 (for context, the Olympic world record for 100m is 10.61seconds for women and 9.62 for men). They’re fast. Trust me, when you’re standing at the finish line with your camera, and the gun goes off for the start, blink and it will be over. You have to get snapping fast, too. 

To start with, I thought I’d be focusing—literally and figuratively—on the physical achievements of these remarkable men and women. Like their Olympian younger counterparts, they are indeed remarkable. Being an elite anything makes you an outlier. But then I realised that there was a quality at all the events I went to that overshone the extraordinary speeds they ran, the heights and lengths they jumped, the distances they threw. This quality was joy.  

The events were brimming with joy, overflowing with joy. True, they were also brimming with the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to make and break world records, whatever our age, but the joy was palpable. It was joy that went way beyond the joy of achievement, of pushing your body to its limits and winning medals—though that was there, too. I kept trying to put my finger on it. I wanted to bottle it! Was it camaraderie? Yes, that too, but it was something more even than that. I decided it was the joy of community. 

The American poet and writer Enuma Okuro writes about the value of “creating communities that feel safe enough for us to show up in our complicated selves, and that keep us open to giving, receiving and being transformed.” The more I’ve embedded myself in the world of older sportsmen and women— be they track & field athletes, hockey players, cyclists, swimmers or whatever—the more I realise that this is absolutely what they do. They create safe and nurturing communities of very different people with one key common interest—their chosen sport. Each individual has a story, each one has his or her own path to being there. Even calling them “elite athletes” implies a homogeneity that simply isn’t there. It’s a messier, more complicated, and more interesting picture than that. 

I used to think that these athletes I was photographing were super-human, the lucky ones who could effortlessly run, swim or cycle faster, or play their sport with a higher degree of skill and dexterity, than the rest of us lesser mortals. But they’re not. They put in the hours of training, they dedicate themselves week in, week out, to reaching their goals in the sport they love. But it’s tough and it hurts and it takes mental as well as physical fortitude and resilience to show up time after time. Because they all appreciate that every one of them is doing this, when they meet up at competitions, there’s a respect and a mutual understanding that glues them together.  

They are, of course, susceptible to the same losses that hit the rest of us as we age— the cancers, the heart diseases, strokes, joint issues, and bereavements. I say “of course” but I ruefully have to admit I was disappointed to have the super-human fantasy bubble I’d built around them burst. They understand that there’s no escape from “the crap life throws at us,” as one athlete put it to me, even if it’s alongside medals, triumphs, and records. So, they support each other, across national boundaries, language barriers, and different age groups. They’re there for each other. They turn up on each other’s Facebook posts and on each other’s doorsteps. After 15 years alongside them, I’m only beginning to discover the extent to which they keep each other going, hold each other up. 

I recently collaborated with filmmaker Danielle Sellwood to make a film that followed four British female masters athletes, ages 69 and 84, called Younger: Looking Forward to Getting Older. It was this very precious and real lived experience of community that shone through above all else for us. What keeps these women coming back time and again to gruelling competitions, often in terrible weather and in unglamorous, empty stadia? Simple. 

“We do it for the people,” said one of them. Dorothy, our eldest participant at 84, has her tight-knit “gang”, a small group of fellow athletes who live in different parts of the UK but who phone each other daily, travel together to all the major events, and who show up at each other’s houses whenever illness or injury strike. As, increasingly it does. 

One of the reasons I photograph older athletes is you can visually show how nuanced getting older is. It’s not all bad, just as being young isn’t all good. Both categories, if they even are ones, deserve more interesting scrutiny than flattening them out to reductive and simplistic clichés. Photos can reveal both wrinkles and muscles in the athletes’ arms and legs, with their implications of co-existent frailty and strength. Yes, aging brings its challenges, we’d be foolish to deny this, but it also can be a time of opportunity, of growth and yes, of transformation. And the same can be said of being young. What do all of us need? Each other, that’s what.  

Call me a slow learner, but I’m only just appreciating—through the community I photograph—that when mishaps befall us, how we get through to the other side is by allowing ourselves to reach out to the hands that will guide us there. During these 15 years, I’ve had a hip replacement myself. My default setting is to catastrophise, which meant that, facing surgery, I was moaning about my fate to an athlete at an event. “Go and talk with Lucy,” she urged, indicating a woman in her 60s leaping over hurdles at that moment. “She’s had both hips done within two years of each other, the last one 18 months ago. Look at her now!” I did talk with Lucy, who promptly offered to mentor me through to the other side of my surgery and rehab. Through her and her fellow athletes I’m learning to reframe my catastrophising mentality. Old me: There’s a mountain blocking my path. New me (well, almost): There’s a mountain I can find a way across.  

I also used to think the way to deal with the tough periods was to batten down the hatches and go it alone. Now I believe the opposite to be true. I’ve learned that together is how we make it through the night. I thought I had a mission to help transform some of the lazy stereotypes that exist in our society around aging but what’s happened is that the people I’ve been photographing have ended up transforming me. They’ve welcomed me into their community, and we’ve aged together, “my” athletes and me, not that we’re done yet. It’s a lifelong process, aging, and I’m deeply grateful to have them alongside me for the ride.  

 Alex Rotas is an award-winning photographer, writer, and speaker based in Bristol, England. She is known for her images of athletes aged 60+ that dramatically challenge negative perceptions of aging. She has exhibited globally in public spaces, health care settings, and galleries and contributed to numerous media discussions on aging and sport. 

Alex’s film, Younger: Looking Forward to Getting Older, was released in cinemas across the UK in 2024. Made with British filmmaker Danielle Sellwood of Find It Film https://www.finditfilm.com, this 56-minute documentary follows four female British athletes aged between 69 and 84. “It gifts its viewers, of any age, an entirely new picture of what aging looks like,” writes Forbes magazine and   “it is just so joyful… A powerful antidote to what the ageing process is supposed to look like,” according to BBC Radio Scotland. It will be available for rental on Prime in the U.S, and the UK in early 2025.   

Go for It!

Our Inner Ageist

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