My mother celebrated her 87th birthday on April 24th, and she remains mostly independent..That is, she still lives alone with daily visits by the rest of us, and continues to work at the office for a couple of hours most days. But it is clear to her and the rest of us that her capacity has severely deteriorated in the past year, so she walks very slowly and carefully with painful legs and hips and needs assistance putting her socks on. She told me last week that she hears continuous songs ( "America the Beautiful" and an old ballad from her youth in particular, with a male voice) in her head if there is silence, and her brain is such that normal speech is often too fast for her to fully comprehend-even if spoken loudly. In some ways she has regressed to childhood in her forgetfulness and sense of wonder at the most simple of things, yet her basic nature remains as sweet and empathetic as always. There is still emotional wisdom in her along with her lifelong concern for others. It seems as though her body and reasoning ability have diminished with age but not her core personality. She tells me that she is not afraid of dying although her reliance on medicines to sustain her life-the usual heart and water and pain pills-indicates that she still has hope of living for years. I guess she, like most people, has not really confronted death sufficiently to comprehend faith, and the expectant certainty of better things, so she holds on to dear life regardless of its quality. Things simply are not bad enough for her that she wants to go just yet, and in fact are comfortable enough that she accepts them. She has her TV and her family visits and her dark chocolate, and that fulfills her.
Me being me, I cannot help thinking that resources could be better spent on needy children than on people who have lived a good life to a ripe old age, and that there is an element of selfishness in the elderly who do not yield gracefully while consuming other peoples money-and make no mistake-health care in America is mostly other peoples money. Fortunately most of my mother's problems are minimal and she buys her own drugs, but if she were a comatose person in a wheel chair drooling in a nursing home, to keep her alive would be inhumane. I do not advocate heartlessness, only wish that people would not fear their own mortality so much, and that requires faith in something beyond medicine.
