Bumpy Travels in the Land of the Elderly Old

Not everyone reading these words will be able to book passage on a trip to the Land of the Elderly Old. Still, since 2000 the world has been adding 795,000 people a month to this unchartered territory, according to the Census Bureau’s booklet “An Aging World.” In 1919, when I was born, the average life span was 54.7 years. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, it was at a high of 77.3 years in 2005. Worldwide, women live longer than men, although surveys show men are catching up.

But, male and female, the Census Bureau’s “elderly old” -- those 85 and older -- comprise 4.9 million Americans.

Rich or poor, whatever color or religion, when you reach those years, you face many questions. If you’re physically OK, you wonder how long you will be able to maintain your current lifestyle. If married, you wonder what changes you might have to make financially and physically if one of you becomes ill or dies. What if you can no longer care for yourself? Have you checked out retirement and assisted-living facilities to know their costs, their pluses and minuses? When should one or both of you stop driving? What if you have to ask your children for support?

The 21st century is forcing us to add new questions. What happens if our Social Security benefits disappear? The monthly cost of everything, including medical insurance, increases every year. This year, my husband’s and my medical costs equal half of one of our Social Security checks.

We who grew up during the Depression have a difficult time with the changing value of money. How could what we thought would last a lifetime have shrunk so fast?

And then there’s this business of losing our memory. Cancer used to be the scare word when our parents were aging. Now it’s Alzheimer’s. Every “senior moment” becomes a fearful symptom.

Why isn’t a part of the world adjusting to the increasing number of people who wear hearing aids? Those automated phone systems help businesses lay off workers, but our brains, which process speech more slowly every day, get lost in their instructions.

And what about those new packaging geniuses: They beat out terrorists for scaring elders with arthritic fingers.

Cataracts and macular degeneration are words more familiar to us than the names of movie stars.

We laughingly claim the territory is not a place for sissies but fight off the Depression, which we beat in the 1930s. Now it’s returned as a different beast.

What we miss the most is a sense of integrity. Growing up, our parents taught us, “There’s no free lunch.” We have been given almost 40 more years during our lifetime. But we have friends celebrating their 90th, 100th even their 105th birthdays. Are these extra years a joke, a test or a punishment?

These are the thoughts troubling this member of the Land of the Elderly Old. Youth have replaced us as the revered ones. It was ever so, the sages say.

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made ....

Are we equal to the task?