It’s hard to overestimate the enormous gains of the LGBTQ movement over the last two decades. Once thought unthinkable, marriage rights have been expanded nationwide. Bigotry is shunned, instead of accepted. And while incivility and indecency are retrenching, and the victories of the last 20 years are suddenly uncertain, the battlefield has shifted—it’s much more difficult to take away rights in our modern day.
Early in 2016, I was talking to a woman serving as caretaker for her aging father. She could see him slowing, and wasn’t sure if he would live to see 2017 come around, as it must. The year would move forward and bring with it what it would.
The Business of Longevity, an Economist forum co-supported by IOA | Image courtesy Ross Marlowe, Eversnap Pro[/caption]
These days, it’s natural for people to think about planning for their future long-term care when they’re still young. Whether it’s building a healthy retirement fund, getting a custom life insurance plan, or budgeting tightly over time, there’s a lot more education out there focused on preparing for healthcare costs well into old age. But previous generations haven’t necessarily grown up thinking about insurance or fall-back plans—even just 30 years ago, planning for your financial future wasn’t necessarily common.
How do you remember Gene Wilder? Generations have grown up with him as Willy Wonka, mad genius and difficult giant. They remember his fierce outbursts, sly songs, hidden sense of menace, and, ultimately, his heart, in helping a poor child who just wanted to believe. Is that how you remember him? Or is it for his great comedies, those collaborations with Mel Brooks: the shaky sheriff in Blazing Saddles, the scheming schmuck in The Producers, or the not-mad-but-yes-very-mad-scientist in Young Frankenstein? Or, his older movies, like the buddy ones with Richard Pryor where he had the gentleness of a child?
There aren’t many professions where you develop a deep, emotional, and truly personal bond with a client, to the point where they no longer seem like a client, but more like a friend. There are still fewer professions where you develop that bond near the end of your client’s life. This professional-personal connection is part of life for a professional caregiver for older adults. Professional caregivers enter into someone’s life, help them through what could be their worst moments, interact with family members, and possibly spend more time with someone facing their final days than anyone else. And when they die, your job is over, and it is time to move on.
All photos taken by Babon Photo[/caption]
A wonderful older woman, Ophelia, once told me how much she loves stories where people come back from supposedly being dead to witness their own funeral. Yes, Ebenezer Scrooge fits the bill, but a more cheerful tale, and probably her favorite, is that of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and their “interrupted funeral.” There is something sweet and wonderful about it: to see how you are mourned, and what people are saying. To see how you are remembered.
There were two pictures on the book cover. One was black and white, taken at the corner of 61st and Ellis on Chicago’s South Side. The photo was of a drugstore and outside of it was a mailbox. The other picture on the cover—this one in color—showed five older men in their 70s standing around that same mailbox. The drugstore was gone, the neighborhood had changed, but the mailbox was still there, an old-fashioned relic that pre-dated their friendship. These men grew up together, meeting in the early 40s, and they used to hang out on that corner as boys. The book, Standing on the Corner, was the story they wrote together of those times and their lives in them.
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