“I am a retired
teacher and widow of 79 years and I live in a flat within a sheltered
residential complex as my health is beginning to fail. It is comfortable but I
do not find the company congenial. I have two married daughters, one who lives
abroad and one who lives a two-hour journey away. All the conversation here,
especially amongst the women, revolves around comparing their children and
grand-children over such things as visits. It never used to have any impact on
me but just now it has made me feel more and more depressed.”
Mrs
U.
Approaching a new decade is often a charged
experience. After the mid-life point, each new decade underlines the reality of
mortality. Despite the increase in life expectancy, coming to the eighth decade
means getting closer to the reality of your own death and often, as has
happened with Mrs U, the death of a partner, friend or relative.
Mrs U’s description of herself as a retired
teacher and a widow conveys two different losses. As well as the loss of a
partner there is the loss of professional life after retirement. Although
research shows that people in thinking professions (such as philosophers,
psychoanalysts and writers) live longer, this might have less to do with their
habit of exercising the brain. It might be more linked to the fact that such
individuals can work past retirement age and not face that loss because their
particular skills carry no enforced retirement age.
For some, creative new work can co-exist with
and enrich the negotiations with mortality. Dr. John Bowlby, for example, was
able to complete a major biography of Charles Darwin in his last two years of
life at the same time as turning down future lecture requests on the grounds
that “I might not be alive when the time comes”. John Gielgud at 88 has just
achieved a lifetime’s aim of taking the part of Prospero whilst realistically
worrying if he would be alive to see the film appear. However, if you cannot use
your professional skills after retirement and your peer group do not value your
past professional experience there are extra difficulties.
Had her husband been alive Mrs U might not
have felt so vulnerable to the comments of her neighbours. Facing a new late
decade alone and facing the prospect of death alone is quite a major task. A
younger adult who does not like her neighbours or work colleagues is able to
move away to a more congenial place. However, when you are elderly and becoming
more frail, you are not free to move in the same autonomous way and paying to
be in a physically comfortable and secure environment does not ensure congenial
company. Depending on the level of her frailty Mrs U might like to join the
University of the Third Age or attend a local day class to find alternative
companions.
Sometimes creativity can be expressed through
the experiences of children, grand-children or younger friends. However, the
kind of envious competing that Mrs U describes is not creative. It may be that
her neighbours are feeling as depressed as she is. Feelings of emptiness and
unwantedness can be put at bay by passing stern judgements on absent children.
Fear of the emotional reversal of needing your children physically present to
parent you can also be hidden by this kind of conversation.
For whilst the “young” elderly might enjoy
the distant exploits of their adult children the “old” old are more likely to
be in touch with a sense of physical frailty and show greater dependency needs.
The late psychoanalyst Peter Hildebrand pointed out that the “young old” can
find pleasure in exploring areas that had to be suppressed in the interests of
carrying out careers and parental roles whilst the very old have to face
dependency issues and more infantile needs.
Mrs U is suffering. What can she do?
Professor Hildebrand considered that if there is a solution it is more likely
to be through self-help groups rather than expecting children to provide the
sort of care people need. However, has Mrs U told her daughters and sons-in-law
that she is feeling depressed? Fear of showing need could deprive Mrs U of
extra contact. It may be that even if they were told Mrs U’s daughters might
not be able to offer more than they do. However, without testing that Mrs U will
not know.
If Mrs U stays depressed Professor Hildebrand
sees psychotherapy as an aid to dealing with the lessening of power and
control. Professor Hildebrand’s oldest patient was 94 which gives Mrs U another
fifteen years in which to consider help!