Tag: aging

  • Life Can Turn On a Dime

    [Introduction from Jim Sabin: This anonymous post was published recently on the Age with Spirit blog. Via Al Martin, the editor of the blog and author of a number of posts for Over 65, I’ve received permission from the anonymous author to republish it. I wanted to do so because it discusses the psychological transition…

  • Retirement, 20 years from now

    A national organization recently asked me to write a brief piece on the future of retirement.  Here’s how I responded. I know what retirement will–or at least should–look like 20 years from now. I’m just not sure how we will get from here to there. Unfortunately, my best guess is that we will have to…

  • Sex after Sixty-Five  

    “No personal confession or revelation impends here, but these feelings in old folks are widely treated like a raunchy secret.” (From Roger Angell’s “This Old Man: Life in the Nineties.”) In contrast to my usual posts on this site, there will be no personal revelations by me here either, other than to say that sex…

  • Why I Hope Not to Die at 75

    I feel uniquely qualified to comment on Zeke Emanuel’s much-discussed article “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” I’m smack in the middle of the year he hopes will be his last. In addition, many years ago I wrote a book about health care organizational ethics with him (and Steven Pearson). I loved working with…

  • Fathers, Sons, and Books

    In November, 2012, I wrote a post about my mother’s hospice care. Mom died peacefully on January 6, 2013 at the age of 93. This post is about my father. Over the past three weeks I have spent more “quality time” with my father than ever before. We have had a lot to review about…

  • A Living Resume

    On the occasion of my last birthday, a friend asked how it feels to be growing old? I proffered first, the old bromide that in my head I feelabout thirty, but my body groans a wholly different story. Then I joked that when people intone, “Well, you’re only as old as you feel,” I reflexively…

  • Will guilt keep me from doing what is best for my Alzheimer spouse?

    I met Vickie in Your Father’s Mustache, a sing-along place in Greenwich Village 46 years ago.  She had long dark hair and wore a poncho like Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars. She was singing and swaying with such joy. She had the kind of face you could look at the rest of your life. …

  • Dementia and the Goals of Care

    Even though you think and behave perfectly normally, you might already have Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, you might warrant the label of “pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease” for a full 20 years before graduating to the full-fledged condition. That according to the latest definition of Alzheimer’s put forward by the National Institute on Aging together with Alzheimer’s Association…

  • A Retirement Community’s Private and Public Affairs

    Our move from the Washington area to a retirement community in Baltimore called Roland Park Place came five ago when, I was 81 and my wife, Pat, was 80. It was concerns about our health and a concerted push from our seven children that propelled us to decide to move. It had become more noticeable that Pat might have Alzheimer’s. For me,…

  • Aging with Purpose

    Near the end of my clinical career as a psychiatrist, I, like so many other psychiatrists, was required to do more in less time. In order to use that precious time as best as possible, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to offset that limitation. Soon, I recalled the landmark book…