Geriatrics brings with it many a problem, and loneliness is one of them. Hats off to those who age with grace and exuberance
SOUNDS kind of wacky, but when days on earth seem numbered, why in heaven should mortals be celebrating life? Mirroring Schiller’s song Ode to Joy, glorified in the choral movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, why must Marie and Martini move forth unbounded by age?
Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire drunken we are ent’ring
Heavenly, thy holy home!
Thy enchantments bind together,
Be embrac’d, ye millions yonder!
Take this kiss throughout the world!
Brothers—o’er the stars unfurl’d
Must reside a loving father ...
America is greying at the speed of light — well not exactly — but wherever one looks, old, yes, really old folks, creak out of nooks and crannies, carrying a carcass of life that once rocked with action of memories too deep for tears. Their past is another century, too wearily writ on their faces.
By 2030, 20 per cent of Americans would have attained the geriatric age. And this is sounding alarm bells ringing loud and clear all across the country. Prepare for an interminably long life, no matter what its quality, is the writing on the wall. With leaps phenomenal in science and medicine, life expectancy of old people spirals sky-wards. The new American national anthem ‘never say die’ is like a placebo for dotards, strip off the euphoria and there you have it — geezer-hood’s aches and pains; loneliness and want; an overarching disconnect with the outside world.
Marie and Martini are different. They are exuberant people — no hyperbole here. Sceptics, the vinegary variety, might dismiss such a claim, arguing how can the feeble, with one foot in the grave, literally, be overflowing with enthusiasm?
Well they do! Both are in their mid-eighties, both are very active, both live alone, both lost their spouses last year and both have zip — as much as their frailty can whip up. (Say’s who that exuberance is only youth driven?)
What is this thing called exuberance, anyway? Can it be defined? Is it palpable, visceral, or merely tangential? Is the feeling acquired or God-given? Can those who lack it ever get its flavour, even fleetingly? “It’s a mood or temperament of joyfulness, ebullience, and high spirits, a state of overflowing energy and delight. It is more energetic than joy and enthusiasm but less intense, although of longer duration, than ecstasy,” says a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University.
Kay Jamison known to the world of psychology as the “foremost chronicler of the mind’s darkest weather” (she suffers from manic depression) says, “If you’ve got it — and it’s probably hereditary — you’re most likely one of those people who rolls out of bed in the morning trilling that line from Longfellow ‘Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate’”. And that is exactly what Marie and Martini do.
Every morning, Marie, 86, takes a shower, styles her short white curls, dresses herself in one of her petite colour-filled outfits, making sure her costume jewellry is matching and her black dainty pumps are shining bright.
She’s a woman in a hurry. “I am walking across to the supermarket, I need to buy groceries”, she says cheerfully, stepping out of her apartment, waving to anyone she meets on the way and there she goes on a shopping spree.
Eighty-six, and the grand dame doesn’t feel burdened, footing it to the shopping mall, quite a distance from her home? That’s my first thought. The second is: brr ... it’s winter time, doesn’t she feel cold!
Marie is deaf. Both her eardrums are punctured. So, she wears a device in her ear lobes that make a whistling sound each time Marie moves her head too fast. “I have to keep my head straight,” she says. Often, the hearing aid goes haywire creating a racket all around. Just think, how much shrieking Marie’s ears must bear? But she lives with the pain.
Someone at the door? But she can’t hear the bell go off. “Joe (her only son and himself a grandfather of eight grandchildren) has put light fixtures all around my place that flicker each time the button on the front door is pushed.”
Inside, a November sun radiates the living room, lighting fire to those crystal drops, necklaced around the lampshades, perched atop golden cherubs, “these lamps are 40 years old, and so is all this furniture,” says Marie, as my eye roves around. “Come see my bedroom,” an invitation that is too hard to resist. On her bedside is My Life by Bill Clinton. Oh, give me a break! Even I couldn’t finish the book, leave alone trying to balance the fatso.
Are you sure, you don’t want coffee? No thanks, I say, making a mental note that not many Americans in this day and age open their homes to strangers (especially Pakistanis) leave alone offering tea or coffee. Hospitality and warmth is not one of America’s hallmarks, post 9/11.
Exuberant people, explains Jamison — the Johns Hopkins professor: “have great capacity for making noise, for bounding from one idea or project to the next, but this energy seems to go hand in hand with a great capacity for contemplation and reflection, for processing what they discovered in their exuberance.”
You must wonder how this highbrow definition applies to Marie? Where’s the meeting of the minds (Jamison’s esoteric scholarship and an ordinary everyday old woman’s mental setup)? Marie is like an excited schoolgirl, who puts out her wardrobe the night before when she’s attending a great-grandchild’s birthday party or going to Sunday church or eating dinner out with a friend. “I hope, I never have to go to an old people’s home ever, ever,” she replies to my question: where is the spring of her joy de vivre.
Martini, an ex-navy man is 84. He inhabits the same house for the last 50 years, the same bed he shared with his wife, his companion of those golden years. “I have travelled far and wide. My ship docked at Karachi harbour too,” says the man who looks too young for his age. “Each day is filled with anticipation”. Martini and I first meet at a burger joint. Sitting across the table, he lights up a conversation that covers the full distance of his wonderful life. “I have children, but they live on the west coast. They visit once a year.”
But aren’t you lonely? I keep nudging him, during our tete-e- tete, continued at his 5-bedroom home. “Why should I be lonely?” he counter questions. “Down the road, I have made some good friends, especially one family whose children I baby-sit whenever their mom is running errands.”
Ah! So now I know the secret of Martini’s ‘exuberance’. He is a giving man and gives freely of his time, love and energy to others, especially tiny tots. “You can say that,” he responds, “but I have other activities like reading, I want to keep abreast of what the world is up to while I was sleeping!” he grins and passes me a cookie.
Why do we tend to pigeonhole old people as crabby, always playing the victim and growing increasingly grouchy, demanding and definitely unsavoury? Granted some are a host to depression and melancholia while a few unfortunate — hypochondriacs aside — genuinely face serious health problems, society on the whole has little time for the old.
Loneliness is cited as the number 1 scourge of aging. Horror stories of abandonment and abuse by relatives abound. Many die an undignified death. Their tales could drown an ocean with tears. Still, many more like Marie and Martini have exuberant temperaments. “Hyperthymic” is the term Dr Jamison uses to describe those who are cheerful, talkative, and extroverted — “they maintain that childlike capacity to fall in love with the world all over again, who are able to bring a new view to whatever problem they’re looking at ... it’s the pursuit. “Exuberance has a restlessness in it. It’s not discontent — it’s a forward-moving, active restlessness”.
Geriatrics brings with it many a problem, and loneliness is one of them. Hats off to those who age with grace and exuberance 
