{"id":4242,"date":"2025-10-03T02:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4242"},"modified":"2025-10-02T22:03:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T06:03:56","slug":"thinking-about-old-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2025\/10\/03\/thinking-about-old-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About Old Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading an interview with Richard Osman (find it here in either video or a transcript<\/a>), who has written a series of mysteries called the Thursday Murder Club about people over 80 living in a retirement community and solving mysteries.<\/p>\n

The books are read worldwide, translated into a number of languages. In talking about how societies treat their elders \u2013 and assuming that in the UK and the US we treat them badly \u2013 he said this:<\/p>\n

But in Mediterranean countries, in Arabic countries, in China, elders are traditionally revered. Except every time I go to one of those places, people say, \u201cOh no, we\u2019re exactly the same. We treat older people terribly.\u201d And I\u2019ll say, \u201cNo, you don\u2019t, not really.\u201d And they insist, \u201cYes, honestly, that\u2019s why we love these books.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that resonated with me, because I know there are segments in our culture which supposedly revere elders and yet as someone who technically qualifies for elderhood, when I see the way those elders are treated, I find it condescending.<\/p>\n

I like the idea of a book that treats so-called elders like people, so I put the first one on hold at my library.<\/p>\n

But I have to say, I don\u2019t want to live in a retirement village. I want to live around people of all ages.<\/p>\n

Michelle Cottle, who did the interview, said living in a retirement village would be kind of like being back in college except without having to go to class. But having spent time visiting people living in such places, I don\u2019t find that true. Part of that might be that as much as we complained about it, going to class was a major part of going to college and generated a lot of the ideas that made for good conversations with our friends.<\/p>\n

I would like to live in community that had some of the aspects of college \u2013 my six weeks at Clarion West, living in a dorm with my fellow students, going to class, barely sleeping, were a high point in my life. But the students in our group ranged from their early twenties to their mid-fifties.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not planning to move into a retirement village or similar facility for old folks, at least not now. My partner and I are part of East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative<\/a> and we are trying to organize a multifamily co-op apartment building as part of that, one that would include a diverse group of people.<\/p>\n

But there is another issue here, one I wrestle with. What if I develop a condition such as dementia or another severe illness or disability and need the kind of full-time care one gets in assisted living or nursing homes? I do not want my partner, assuming he is still able to do so, to spend all his time caring for my needs, and even though I\u2019m putting money aside for my care in the future, I doubt I will have enough for 24-hour live-in aides. <\/p>\n

The best assisted living and nursing care facilities are attached to retirement communities that cater to healthy seniors. You pay \u2013 pay a lot \u2013 to move in, and pay a lot per month, but if you become seriously ill or disabled, you can then move into the parts of the facility that provide the level of care you need. (These are generally called continuing care communities.)<\/p>\n

Finding a good place for memory or nursing care when you are not part of that community is much more difficult and the waiting lists are often long. Plus the cost might well be prohibitive, especially given the current government cuts to Medicaid, which pays for a large percentage of nursing care since the average person cannot afford to pay thousands per month.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to mention that private equity is buying up nursing homes and even assisted living facilities, reducing (and underpaying) staff, and generally making them horrible places to live. And even kicking people out of them \u2013 people who can\u2019t get out of bed on their own, people with dementia.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a balance we all need to think about as we get older. Yes, we want to be part of the larger community, consulted about what goes on it the world, doing work that we want to do whether it pays or not. On the other hand, we do have to be practical about the challenges of age. We are all going to die, and some of us will have some hard years before we do.<\/p>\n

I mean, I\u2019m hoping to go like my grandmother, who was still living in her own house, doing her own cooking and such. She\u2019d stopped driving \u2013 my parents took her shopping and to the doctor \u2013 but she was still mentally active and competent to care for herself. And then one morning she didn\u2019t wake up.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve watched other members of my family struggle with long term chronic illness, dementia, and a stroke that didn\u2019t kill, but left them bedridden. There are no guarantees, no matter how healthy and practical your lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Of course what I want is a network of well-run, government-funded assisted living and care homes that people can move to if necessary without having to make major advance plans and deposits of money.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t have that, except that here in the United States we seem to be determined to make things that could be simple as over-complicated as possible on the off chance that we\u2019re keeping someone, somewhere from getting something they don\u2019t deserve. And mind you, that\u2019s how it is when the country is more or less working as intended, which is, of course, not right now.<\/p>\n

But we could have better systems. The barriers to them are political, not fundamental. It\u2019s unlikely that they\u2019d cost anymore than the chaotic mess we have now.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading a book by Rob Hopkins called How to Fall in Love With the Future: A Time Travelers Guide to Changing the World<\/i>. It\u2019s about visualizing the kind of world we want to live in, with a strong focus on climate change.<\/p>\n

He does workshops in which people \u201ctravel\u201d to a date in the future and come up with the specifics of what they see, hear, smell, taste, and otherwise experience, such as a neighborhood filled with trees and birds where people walk and bike to school and work.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m \u201ctraveling\u201d to a future where we have neighborhood care homes for elders who cannot care for themselves, places where their friends and family can easily visit, where they can go outdoors, where there are plenty of caregivers who know what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

And you don\u2019t have to be on a waiting list or live in a retirement community to move in if you need that place.<\/p>\n

We can do this. Sure, there are barriers, but we have to stop focusing on those and instead think about how to make the systems we need and want happen.<\/p>\n

Be nice if we pull that off before I die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading an interview with Richard Osman (find it here in either video or a transcript), who has written a series of mysteries called the Thursday Murder Club about people over 80 living in a retirement community and solving mysteries. The books are read worldwide, translated into a number of languages. In talking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[701,9,17],"tags":[1117,1127,1126],"class_list":["post-4242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-mystery","category-rants","tag-eb-prec","tag-elders","tag-richard-osman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4243,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions\/4243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}