Death occupied my mind this winter. Somehow it seemed closer.

This summer, not so much. Too much to do getting ready for winter.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Nina - I have definitely noticed occasional problems with word retrieval and also short term memory blips (what did I come down to the basement for?). Both a little scary since like you, these were not a problem for me in the past.

Yes, problems with word retrieval and mental math.

I've been depending a lot on Google for a long time - to find names of well-known people, books, etc. (I describe them, until Google reminds me). I am experiencing a phenomenon I've heard of - where we rely on Google as a kind of extended hard-drive.

I've often heard (reassuring, to me), that though our memories fail with age, "oldsters" manage almost as well as before because of learning work-arounds to compensate. Kind of mental post-it notes. (Clearly, this doesn't apply to out and out dementia).

I've always had a problem with names, and that's certainly getting worse. When I have to oversee introductions, it's a nightmare. I wish everyone wore name-tags!

I spent hours today going through a few boxes of memorabilia - old letters, writing projects, journals, bright ideas to follow up on. It was horrifying how many experiences and friends I have scarcely or no recollection of.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
It occupies my thoughts more than I wish it would.

However, I do not wish to be one of those old people who can only talk about physical ills or death.

In his later years, William F Buckley had some rule when socializing that I don’t quite remember, but something like each person had only 2 minutes to talk about health issues. After that they had to make conversation like they were 50.

He just didn’t want his famous dinner parties to devolve into geriatric bitch-fests.

I think about it some, but it doesn’t bother me.

What bothers me is the decline. I mean, they just sliced off the top of my thigh bone and replaced it with metal and plastic. Parts of me are breaking down.

I don’t like it at all.

And I don’t like the way my body looks in a mirror. I saw a pic of myself in a swimsuit from four years ago, and I was crushing it. Now, I look like my mom.

Ahem.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

He just didn’t want his famous dinner parties to devolve into geriatric bitch-fests.

My Uncle calls those “Organ Recitals.”

I'm with Cindy on the decline. I find myself making decisions like this: "I don't want to take this [random pill that a lot of us take as we get older] but I'll do it if it will help me keep my marbles."

I find myself reaching for words on occasion, but I'm not sure that it's happening more than it used to. It may be that I've reached an age where I'm expecting a decline, and I don't like the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Similarly, between teaching and book talks, I do a lot of extemporaneous speaking. I've always been able to plan the high points of a talk, and then do a verbal meander along the way, taking digressions as they occur to me but always getting back to the plan. Well, I can still do that, but sometimes I'll think of something I want to say after I finish my current thought and it's not quite there when the time comes. I can usually replay the sequence of thoughts and get to it, and I'm not sure it happens more than it used to, but those little bobbles make you think.

Relatedly, there have been several tragically early deaths in my circle in the past few years that has the potential to send me down an emotional death spiral of "Why are we even here and what is the point of it all?" if I'm not careful. A friend's young child lost to cancer. Another friend's adult child lost to a house fire. A forty-something-year-old father of young children lost to cancer. A fifty-something-year-old father of a teenager lost to cancer. None of it makes any sense.

I remember my grandmother and her friends always talking about heath conditions and what to do about them. Now I know why.

Don was unhappy that the surgery for his broken hip only left him a small scar to show.

It's not just you, wtg. Perhaps my present incapacitation has made me more conscious of mortality, but it's also the more frequent deaths of people who I think of as from my generation - cousins, old school mates, co-workers from years past. It only becomes more frequent for awhile and then thins out as the generation passes until you yourself die or are left as an outlier. That was pretty much the fate of my mother and my mother-in-law who each outlived all their siblings.

O quam cito transit gloria mundi

Big Al

Coincidentally this topic came up this afternoon. A woman I've been very good friends with for 30 years and I escaped our messy lives for a day trip to a beautiful mountain lake to go swimming this afternoon. It was glorious!

And as we lay on our picnic blanket drying off in the sun, laughing, telling stories, or just enjoying the silence of being out in the mountains, she brought up this very same subject.

She has recently lost a lot of people. Her dad, who is still an active 97 and who has lost all his old friends told her, "get used to it."

Mr. Pique's mother died in June at the age of 96. All her old friends had been long gone. No one from her generation to come to her funeral.

I don't have as big a social circle as either of them, but I lost a very dear friend nearly 25 years ago to breast cancer and I still think about her nearly every day. I still wish I could talk to her.

I'm 66 and I expect this to become a more common part of my landscape, even as I fight to retain whatever fitness and health I have left.

Nina I've had the word problem for a long time now. But I have had three TBIs in my life, and the effects of that start to show up more as you age. Some times I have to work really hard at it. I am still writing, but I can't do the kind of mental multi-tasking that I once used to write about public policy any more. That level of analysis is hard, always was hard, but now I don't even want to try.

Public speaking isn't affected so much. It's more the ability I once had to take and synthesize disparate threads of information and draw conclusions and birth new ideas is definitely waning. Hurts me as an essayist, but not as a conversationalist--so far.

As long as I can hike and ride and be in nature I suspect I will still feel like myself. How much longeer will that be? My spine is a train wreck, so we'll see.

I think a big part of adapting to this stage of life is learning how to simply allow things to be as and what they are, to give up struggling so hard and find acceptance and be at peace with what is.

For me, my memory is very inconsistent. Things can happen one day that get lost in the larger flow, and, days or months later, I will remember nothing about them, even if they were important. it significantly hampers my work. I haven't found great solutions. But I also have not stopped working because of it.

The tough conversations. We know what we need to do, but often we don't.

https://getpocket.com/explore/...-ones-will-thank-you

I just learned that a friend of mine from Florida died at 72. I was told years ago that she was having serious issues with dementia, so it must have started in her mid-sixties.

These are the things that really make you think.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
The tough conversations. We know what we need to do, but often we don't.

https://getpocket.com/explore/...-ones-will-thank-you

We’ve had a limited version of this conversation with both moms that remain. One isn’t a particularly deep thinker, and didn’t really want to go there. The other knew exactly what she wanted, but her memory is so bad now I’m sure she doesn’t remember talking about it. This morning she didn’t remember that we’ve ever done a Zoom call with her, and was very excited about the technology. We’ve been doing it weekly for two years.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
For me, my memory is very inconsistent.

I've found that my memory is significantly worse if I haven't been sleeping well, or am under a lot of stress.

That pretty much defines my professional life!