Wednesday, April 07, 1999
Author connects to aging parents
She finds 'old-old' offer knowledge
BY CINDY KRANZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
When Mary Pipher's husband read galleys for her new book about the elderly, he picked up the phone and called his sister. Let's go visit the folks, he suggested, and talk about how they want to live and how they want to die. They discused money, living wills, rest homes and more.
The Lincoln, Neb., psychologist hopes others who read her new book will be inspired to make these same connections with their aging parents.
Dr. Pipher charts new territory in Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders (Riverhead Books; $24.95). She is the author of a groundbreaking book about adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia, on best-seller lists for nearly three years.
In her latest book, she interviews clients and visits rest homes and assisted living centers to talk with the “young-old” (those who are healthy and functioning) and the “old-old” (those whose health is failing). She focuses on the old-old, believing we have the most to learn from them.
She shared some thoughts in a telephone interview while in San Francisco on the last leg of a book tour:
Question: What do you mean by Another Country?
Answer: “It's a very old metaphor. St. Patrick referred to old age as "another country.' It also refers to another country to which old people are segregated into assisted living and retirement villages, where they'rekept very far from the rest of us.”
Q. You've said that it's tough to be old in this culture. Why?
A. “There are a lot of reasons. One of them has to do with this business of segregating people by age and putting all our 3-year-olds in one set of buildings, our 14-year-olds in another set, working people in another set and 80-year-olds in another set. Older people, for the most part, just yearn for contact with kids.
Another thing that makes it hard is our lack of planning for old people. There are a lot of old people, but the way we're set up in terms of architecture, lighting, transportation and medical care is based on the assumption we are young and can get around. For example, doctors don't do house calls, but it's very difficult for many old people to get to the doctor's office. I'm 51, and my eyes aren't particularly good. About 50 percent of the restaurants I go into, I can't read the menu. The lighting is too dim, and the print is too small.
Finally, as a culture, our families are so dispersed. As a young-old person you don't necessarily mind that — you can fly across the country. But as an old-old person, people need their families. By far the most common story I hear is, "I'm worried about my mother. She's had a stroke, but she's four states away, and I can only get home once a month.' It's hard because they love their parents and their parents' needs are not being met, and it's really hard for the parents because their needs aren't getting met.
One thing I've learned in doing this book is that old-old people have a complicated set of needs that can't be met by hired help. They can only be met by people they love.”
Q. How do you recommend baby boomers with good jobs living far away from home deal with aging and/or ill parents?
A. There are issues that need to be discussed, regularly, over the course of a lifetime with adult children and parents. When kids are in their 20s, the first talks need to start. "Where is the will? Where is the money? Do you have a safe deposit box? How would you want things to be handled if ... ' Families need to be talking and updating those talks. The particular content is going to change enormously. The important thing about these conversations is that everybody is honest, tells the truth and things are out in the open. Otherwise, what tends to happen is they don't get fully discussed.
The way to approach an older person is to say, "I love you very much, and I'm very concerned that you get what you want as you age and that you have the kind of life you want up until the very end. If I'm going to help, I'd like to know how you feel about death. I need to know your resources. My only goal is to be a useful, kind and as good a daughter as I can be.'”
Q. You talk about how about time zone problems cause generations to clash and misunderstand each other. What do you mean by that?
A. “The misunderstandings are in two big areas. The first is parents being from a communal culture and us being from a fragmented, consumer culture. ... We behave very differently with people than our parents behaved. People live in a world where their expectation is 99.9 percent of human beings they encounter are not people they will have a relationship with. They're moving among strangers. I still come from the kind of neighborhood where people speak on the street.
The other time zone has to do with psychology — the difference between our parents not being a psychologically minded generation and us being very psychologically minded ... Our parents see us as complaining, selfish, pushy. On the other hand, we see them as being in denial, not assertive, passive. Neither generation has a monopoly on good mental health.
Q. How are the elderly afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder?
A. That's really more of a metaphor than diagnostic. One of the problems in understanding old people is we've been 14, but we haven't been 88. It's hard to realize how hard that stage is. One of the things I try to do is build more empathy. How would you feel if you had to face the death of a spouse, a couple of siblings, a couple of best friends, had a best friend who is brain damaged and your own health is going? You were a big reader and big walker, but can't do them anymore. You worry about money and worry about moving into a rest home against your will. You might be depresed, be a worrier, be more anxious, have insomnia. You need to talk about it the way trauma victims need to talk.
The main thing I came away with, in terms of this trauma business, is sort of marveling at how strong these old-old people are, in spite of all these things happening to them. They tend to laugh a lot. They find things to appreciate.”
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