Make New Friends, Make Better Plans?

by ruthpennebaker on July 26, 2010 · 21 comments

One of my friends who’s loosely my age — whatever we’re calling ourselves these days.  Young-old, old-young, baby boomers in deep denial about aging and dying? — told me she and others of our generation are making a concerted effort to befriend younger people.  You know, that vast demographic with the unlined faces, an excess of energy, and lightning-fast high-tech skills.

The younger generation!  They’re everywhere and they move so quickly.  I happen to like them, by and large, and often find myself taking up for them when I hear my own wizened generation berating them (superficial! tech-dependent!  short attention spans!  don’t read books!  greedy, materialistic, entitled!).

Oh, please.  Give me — and them — a break.  I can’t think of anything more predictable or boring than doing exactly what our parents and their parents and millennia of old codgers throughout history have done by dumping on the younger generation.  They are always, let’s recall, going straight to hell in a handbasket or some other mode of conveyance.  They are always dooming civilization as we know it.  They are always inferior to, let’s say, us.

The truth is, they’re simply younger than we are.  They’re often immature and untested and inexperienced, which is exactly what they should be.  I look at their lives and recall what a tough, but exciting time it is to be young.  (I also conclude that I was pretty awful at being young myself; I seem to lack the itchy nostalgia everybody else has about being young, how terrific it was, how much I long for it — the high point of my life.  Uh-uh.  I’m better at being older, as long as, you know, things don’t get out of hand.)

I’m probably prejudiced about this, since our kids are young and I think they’re wonderful.  But I’m also biased because I really treasure my younger friends.  I love hearing about their lives, listening to the fresh perspectives of people brought up in a different era, occasionally giving them advice, since I’m so old, I’d damn well better be wise.

Giving them advice: I like to think I’m pretty good at it.  Not too intrusive, not too verbose.  Just a longer lifetime of perspective.  Recently, in fact, I’d mentally prepared myself to give a young friend going through a difficult time some sage advice: Yes, this is a hard time she’s going through.  But you know what?  Hard times and how well and constructively you handle them make your life.  What you learn from failure and how you tackle it and go on determine so much of the rest of your life.

Great advice!  Pithy and precise.  Except, when I launched into it, she mentioned I’d already told her that before.  Well, at least I’m consistent, I said.

Truth is, I still think it’s excellent advice, however shopworn.  But I know something else about it, something much more uncomfortable: I need to apply it to my own life and my fears of aging badly, of deterioration, of losing all dignity.  I need to handle the remainder of my own life well — and I know it will be a challenge.  What if I get Alzheimer’s, like my father?  Or Parkinson’s, like my mother?  How would I deal with it?

I have seen, up close, productive and independent lives reel out of control.  I know how quickly and relentlessly it can happen.  Will I allow it to happen to me — or am I capable of making other hard decisions, like assisted suicide?  Or will I just talk about it, as I have for years?

I know what some of you will say to me: That I don’t have to think about it now, that none of the above will necessarily happen as I envision it.  So why worry about it now?

Because — again — I’ve seen it up close, seen how quickly events and illnesses can lay siege to plans.  Both my parents died in ways that would have been abhorrent to them.  What makes me think I’m going to be any different?  Will Baby Boomers actively make different choices from their parents’?  Or are we simply deluding ourselves?  You tell me.

(Copyright 2010 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read more about the sweet relief of giving up

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Last Date

by ruthpennebaker on July 21, 2010 · 16 comments

So this is how it ends, I thought.  Birth, childhood, tempestuous adolescence, work, family, illness and death — and someone ends up in a courtroom raising her right hand and correcting the pronunciation of your first name.  Throughout the courtroom, other family members — well-dressed and obviously uncomfortable — sat with their lawyers, then hovered in front of the judge to answer a few questions.  This is how it all ends, with a total stranger in a black robe offering you sympathy and wishing you well.

I am now the executor of my father’s estate.  Death isn’t merely a physical and spiritual matter — it’s financial, it’s legal, it’s business.  Fortunately, I am with an old friend, Gayle, who’s my lawyer.  She’s compassionate and reassuring and she’s had her own terrible losses, so she understands.  She’s also tenacious and experienced, with a head for details.  This makes me think — for the thousandth time — what a shitty lawyer I would have made.  If you want someone who can dot i’s and cross t’s, you don’t want me.  My head is good for something, I like to think, but it goes numb and fuzzy when presented with procedures and forms and the stiff and dense language of contracts.  Get me out of there!

A few years ago, one of my dearest friends was frozen when it came to dealing with her mother’s estate.  I came over one morning to help her — and we ripped through a pile of bills and documents.  It was easy for me and made me feel good about myself that I could help her.

But now I’m in her position and I understand her immobility and helplessness.  I look at the stacks of papers piled here and there in our house — and I’m overwhelmed and exhausted.  You tell yourself this is merely a physical task, something that can be patiently and determinedly worked through.  But its psychic cost is far beyond that.   I am handling money my parents spent a lifetime to accumulate by scrimping and saving.  I know the sacrifice that went into every penny they saved.  I am handling their money and tying up — or putting an end to — their financial lives.  How could a modest amount of money weigh so much?  I’m overwhelmed by it.

Driving home, I turn on my homemade CD and do what I often do when my life is too much for me.  I turn up the volume and blast the same song over and over.  It happens to be “Last Date,” a heartbreaker by Floyd Cramer — full of yearning and melancholy.  I play it again and again, refusing to move on, just wanting to hear that same swell of longing and anguish, then reluctant denouement.

Driving and sniffling, I wonder: Is this how it ends?  You repeat it over and over.  You never have to let go till you’re ready, till the melody no longer moves you, till you’ve finally had enough.

(Copyright 2010 by Ruth Pennebaker)

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The Story of My Professional Life

July 16, 2010

I’ve been toiling away in newspapers, magazines, books and blogs for more than 30 years. But I thought I’d add my own little history of How You Shouldn’t Be a Writer if You Want an Easy Life. Or if You Want to be Rich:

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Quitting Bitching When You’re Ahead

July 13, 2010

I grew up learning about the world in the harsh, vindictive Irish-Scots tradition. Some of it was articulated — e.g., pride goeth before a fall. Some of it was implicit in the fundamental attitude we lived in a hard, unforgiving world, where an implacable, Old Testament fury would exact payment for any lightheartedness or happiness.

No wonder all these feel-good churches are propagating like bunny rabbits in our 21st-century world. Who needs all that Scots-Irish negativity when you can be deliriously thrilled with yourself, your cup running over with self-esteem?

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Hopelessly Devoted and All That

July 9, 2010

I’ve been getting “the look” recently. I say I’m happy to be back in Austin. The other person nods, then stares at me intently. “Are you really happy to be back?” he or she will say. “Really?”

Yeah, really. Sure, I may look overwhelmed and ragged from all the unpacking, the settling in, the glitches. But I feel comfortable and right to be back here, like I’m where I belong.

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