Telephone Calls Ease the Pain : With Unexpected Longevity Comes a High Price: Fear

As she has once a week for seven years, 81-year-old Ida Cooper reached for the telephone and began her morning “rounds.”

“Top o’ the morning to you,” she greeted a 96-year-old Scotsman who promised not to complain about his aches until he reaches 100. She chatted with a 97-year-old widow who sought a dentist for root-canal work. And she exchanged pleasantries with a 91-year-old woman who still drives around town.

By the time Cooper, a volunteer with Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, put down the receiver four hours later, she had checked on the well-being of 48 elderly, vulnerable people who live by themselves.

Time of Vulnerability

“Some people say: ‘You’re the only person who will call my number today. You made my day,’ ” Cooper said. “And, when they tell me that, I say: ‘You made my day, too.’ ”

Cooper’s program and similar ones elsewhere are designed to ease an unintended consequence of living to advanced old age: fear. Even for those in comfortable family situations, old age is a time of increased vulnerability. For those alone, the feeling is most acute.

“There’s always the feeling: ‘Suppose I die? Suppose I get sick during the night?’ ” said Cooper, a retired office manager. “Who would be there to help?”

With changes in life style and advances in medical science, more and more people are living into their 80s, 90s and beyond--years when they had never expected to be alive. They often develop ailments that threaten their ability to take care of themselves. And many of them end up alone.

Cooper, a widow, is among the majority of older people able to help themselves. Except for a cataract problem in her right eye that forced her to stop driving two years ago, she is generally in good health. She takes the bus, keeps up her apartment, enjoys crocheting and is energetic enough to help others through volunteer work.

“My mother passed away 40 years ago at the age of 59,” she said. “Now, I’ve got people in my program who are 97, 96 and 91. . . . I don’t think that medical science realized that people would live to the age they’re living to now, and it’s not prepared for them.”

On this particular morning, her telephone rounds turned up the usual share of little problems, but nothing alarming. An 83-year-old woman was upset because her housekeeper did not show up. A relative youngster of 75 said she had the flu and wanted a doctor to go with her to the hospital. Another person needed information on meal deliveries.

“I will never cut anybody short,” Cooper said. “I let them talk as long as they want.”

Lost Apartment

Despite her own good health, Cooper knows firsthand that life’s little travails can be more threatening to the old than the young. Her apartment building was sold, and the new owner wanted room for office space. After more than three decades in a “gorgeous” five-room apartment, she was forced to compete for an affordable place to live.

To her chagrin, she discovered that “cubbyholes” now rent for three and four times as much as the $174 she was used to paying. She got four eviction notices before finally settling on a three-room apartment that cost more than three times her old rent.

Cooper, who is childless, had no nearby relatives to help her move a lifetime’s accumulation of possessions. Fortunately, the nephew of a friend helped pack and unpack her boxes. But she insists that she could have tackled all 34 cartons herself, given no other choice.

“I don’t want to be a burden to anyone,” she declared.

Fear is a price of living longer.

“I always imagine that I’ll be this way, which is a stupid way to feel,” Cooper added. “You can’t stay the same. But I’d love to stay well as long as I can so I can take care of myself. I don’t even want to think about it.”