Elder wisdom

I’m 72 now, and as my stamina wanes and health issues take their toll, I find myself turning more and more often to nonfiction for guidance. Old age really feels like life on a different planet; you can’t imagine what it’s like until you get here. So I don’t usually pay much attention to what younger people write about old age. That’s mostly about financing your retirement, getting your aging parents safely into care when they get frail, and worrying about seniors bankrupting the healthcare system. Or they fall back on tired old stereotypes: 90-year-old marathon runners, miserable curmudgeons, ditzy old ladies falling for scams. I want guidance from wise, articulate seniors who are travelling this road with me, or younger writers who are listening carefully to them and learning from what they hear. Here are a few books that have helped me. These are not feel-good advice books, and they don’t trade on clichés. They’re honest and hard-hitting, and full of surprises too.

• Being mortal, by Atul Gawande. A surgeon discusses how to live our last days, what’s important, and what doctors could do better. Doctors need to go beyond the medical facts, listen to the patient’s wishes and guide decisions to meet the patient’s goals. Ask the patient: What do you understand of what is happening to you? What are your fears and hopes? What are your goals if your condition worsens? What trade-offs are you willing to make and not willing to make? Which choice best responds to this? Touching, provocative, and personal.
• Dancing fish and ammonites, by Penelope Lively. This award-winning British novelist writes a personal memoir at age 80, exploring old age, history, memory, reading and writing, and six items of import in her life. The mind expands while the body declines. For this author, reading is a meaningful part of lived experience. Rich, eloquent, and reflective.
• Happiness is a choice you make: lessons from a year among the oldest old, by John Leland. This New York Times journalist spent a year interviewing six seniors aged 85 and over, probing how they live and think. Most of them have disabilities and pain, but they don’t define themselves by those things. Freed up from having to build a future, they focus on the present, and make their lives out of what they have to work with now. Written with depth, empathy, and understanding. The experience changed the author’s life.