From The Wall Street Journal:
If books, like movies, were given ratings, Louise Aronson’s “Elderhood” ought to be rated PG-80. Not all that many people 80 or older are likely to have living parents, true, but some warning is nevertheless necessary if you have attained to that august (november? december?) age and plan to read her book. Here are just a few gloomy facts that Dr. Aronson, a geriatrician, bestows upon her readers: 5.3 million Americans had one form or another of dementia in 2015, and more than 80% of these were older than 75; 13 million Americans are incontinent (if the phrase “adult diapers” doesn’t shiver your timbers, nothing will). Half of all adult Americans over 65 will have some form of arthritis. Immunity from infection and disease lessens with advancing age. Loss of acuity in hearing begins in one’s 50s and diminishes further with advancing age. Of sexual activity, about which Dr. Aronson graciously does not provide any dismaying details, let us, too, not speak.
Then there are Dr. Aronson’s case studies, scattered throughout the book, of elderly patients who suffer from every illness and disease going, with the possible exception of dandruff. Here is a characteristic sentence, recounting a visit Dr. Aronson made to the home of one of her patients: “Inez, obese and bedbound with moderately severe vascular dementia, lay propped up in her hospital bed, her mouth open and chest visibly rising and falling.” Then there is Eva, who is “very weak, has audible bone-on-bone arthritis in all major joints, frequent spasms in her left hip, minimal clearance of her right foot and could not move her left foot,” not to mention “a blood cancer that she hoped was cured, asthma, some kind of heart problem, and both glaucoma and macular degeneration.” And you think you’ve got problems.
“Live long enough,” Dr. Aronson writes midway through her book, “and eventually the body fails. It betrays us. Our flesh wrinkles, sags, and sinks. Strength wanes. We lose speed, agility, and balance. . . . Sometimes the mind follows the body’s descent, words, logic, insight, and memories dropping away. We fall ill more often and more gravely. We become frail. The smallest, most ordinary tasks—eating, showering, walking—become time-consuming, difficult, dangerous, or impossible.” One could go on, and Dr. Aronson, relentlessly, does, closing this particular paragraph with: “We fight and flirt with death.”
. . . .
Wedged in between its overwhelming sadness, the book has an upside. According to a study cited by Dr. Aronson—and she cites many studies—life, so to say, begins at 60. “Data from the United States and Western Europe,” she writes, “confirm that most people are around sixty before they achieve levels of well-being comparable to those of twenty-year-olds, and rates climb thereafter.” Arriving at 60 and beyond presumably brings freedom from worry, lessened depression and anger, a firmer sense of one’s self and what one values, greater contentment and happiness. And so it often does, providing one arrives at 60 or beyond without too lengthy a list of regrets.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (PG apologizes for the paywall, but hasn’t figured out a way around it.)