Daylight now plays secondary to darkness. Not the awesome state of Dec. 21, but the gradual nibbling away of four minutes a day of sunlight. That doesn’t sound like a big bite of time until added up and you’re twenty-eight minutes behind the game in taking a walk, taking pictures of the last of summer’s flowers or merely reading without a lamp.
Temperatures are also supposed to be heading to lower numbers. The boys will wear shorts until their friends pull out sweats or long jeans. It’s all relative. In March sixty degrees suggests that a sweater can stay in the car or at home. In October someone will pull out a jacket and hat, maybe even gloves, when leaving for work. Spiders find their way into the house, spinning webs where no one wants to see a creepy critter hanging. The hummingbirds are gone, but the geese increase in number, pooping everywhere and honking at ungodly hours.
Since the pandemic, things have changed. Or maybe it’s my age. Instead of planning a fall and winter wardrobe, I found new black pants, a pair of jeans, a new sweater, and comfortable shoes. A writer’s life is simple without office mates remembering that you’ve worn the same long black turtleneck for a few years.
Open the windows for cool sleeping. Bake apple crisp or apple pie or apple cake. Celebrate the passing of mosquitos when walking the old dog. If it wasn’t for November 5, this could be the best time of the year.
Daffodils and forsythia are in bloom here. Egrets and ducks have returned to the pond. We all made it through another winter, a difficult season with plenty of cold, snow, and ice.
When I was in my forties, I wrote a short story about a woman whose first serious high school boyfriend was drafted to serve in Vietnam. He would die in battle and be remembered as perpetually nineteen. She went on to college, married, had children. As her son prepares for junior prom, she is reminded of Bernie. On the anniversary of his death, she writes him a letter about what it has been like to age decades beyond her teens.
Late in 2022, I prepared for serious surgery. The surgeon called me a ‘low risk’ patient and young for my physical age. Tests showed no other options. All was successful, except emotionally I landed in part of the world described in Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. He writes that we tend to consider aging a failure, or weakness, rather than a normal process. As we live longer and longer, medical processes becomes part of our experience. Doctors know how to preserve life, but not how to help patients cope with how life continually changes.
Like most surgery nothing looks different to others, but I know where the scars are and what each means. I know the medications that support carrying me through a normal life expectancy. I am also learning their downsides. I haven’t returned to tap dancing because the studio floor is slippery, and I am still fighting to return to my prior rock-solid balance. Down dog is back on my aspirational list, but for different reasons than undeveloped muscles.
In the weeks between the first time a doctor said, “maybe six months, certainly not more than a couple of years,” and the night before surgery, I thought about not seeing my granddaughters grow up, about the writing projects that might not be published, about my unwillingness to let life go. When I stopped pushing to be the person folks expect, my fatigue was immense. With surgery on the schedule, I slept a lot, read a lot, thought even more. Because I am used to being productive, I labeled that week practicing recuperation.
I have had friends die of cancer without the medical miracle surgery offered me. I am humbled and so respectful of how they faced the eventuality of their passing.
This spring I wonder how to make these next many years meaningful. A wise friend told me the body needs at least six months to recover from major surgery then encouraged me to give my emotions the same time. A good plan. I’ll enjoy the daffodils and forsythia, then the tulips and lilacs. The demands of regular life are close enough.
With love to my brother, Darrell J. Frisque, who passed too young on April 14, 2007.
Several years back, while serving on the board of the Vital Aging Network, I helped develop Aging With Gusto, a program designed to help people develop more positive views of aging and live their own lives with gusto.
Research shows that people with more positive views of aging live an average of 7.5 years longer than those with more negative views.[1] What’s more, people who perceive their elder selves as a burden to others tend to view their lives as less valuable, which in turn increases their risk of depression and social isolation, both of which have proven to be “silent killers” for older adults.[2]
I felt like I was doing pretty well when it came to living with gusto—I was working less and enjoying life more—but then COVID came along and all my gusto got up and went away-o.
So did the me I knew…and liked.
That me juggled a lot of things at once, effortlessly kept track of deadlines, friends’ birthdays and bill due-dates. She walked 10,000 steps a day, volunteered often, went to yoga on Saturday mornings and loved getting together with friends, even if it meant driving across town in rush-hour traffic.
She also traveled. In 2019, she spent February and March in Panama, May in New York City and much of that summer and fall at a rustic fishing resort near the Canadian border. In 2021, she was set to spend March and April with her sister and her family in Los Angeles, but that trip was cut short due to COVID. So were other travel plans.
And now, roughly 18 months later, I’m no longer she.
My hair, which I used to color blonde, is now gray. My face has new wrinkles. My skin, once taut, is now crepe-y. And while I know these changes took time to develop, it feels like these changes occurred practically overnight while I was quarantining due to COVID.
And the changes aren’t just on the surface. Last summer, after walking became so painful I stopped doing it any more than was absolutely necessary, I was told I need hip replacement surgery. With elective surgeries advised against at the time, I’ve put it off, which is why, when friends invited me to walk with them (one of the few things that felt safe enough to do), I declined.
Instead, my friends and I did a few Zoom calls. Then, because looking presentable wasn’t high on our lists, we talked on the phone. Eventually even that got to be too much, in part because many of us were dealing with some big stuff. Not used to being together 24/7, my partner and I were struggling to get along. One of my sisters and her husband almost lost their business. One friend had pancreatic cancer. Another had a husband with a brain tumor and a son who nearly died from alcohol poisoning.
Living through—and aging—during a pandemic has caused so many of us to reprioritize. As a result, rather than traveling and enjoying many of the other out-and-about activities that we enjoyed pre-pandemic—we are busy taking care our relationships, our livelihoods, our health and the health of our loved ones. No one can blame us; it’s the right thing to do.
But the pandemic has made everything more difficult, more urgent, more immediate. And more solitary. In the process of caring for ourselves and our loved ones, we risk isolating ourselves from support we may desperately need. Doing so can be costly: one study says isolation increases the risk of death by 29 percent, another that loneliness is as lethal as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.[3]
So, I’m working on reclaiming my Aging-with-Gusto mindset by being more proactive in maintaining my own social connections: I’m calling at least one friend or family member each day and sending at least five cards each week. While these are small things, I know from being on the receiving end that they can make a difference. Plus, it’s one thing I can do no matter what is happening with COVID. I call it Gusto Lite, but at least it’s a start.
What are you doing to age with gusto? Please share.
