Indian Writing

Atul Gawande writing about an aging society:

Decline remains our fate; death will come. But, until that last backup system inside each of us fails, decline can occur in two ways. One is early and precipitately, with an old age of enfeeblement and dependence, sustained primarily by nursing homes and hospitals. The other way is more gradual, preserving, for as long as possible, your ability to control your own life.

Finally, at eighty-two, he had to retire. The problem wasn’t his health; it was that of his wife, Bella. They’d been married for more than sixty years. Felix had met Bella when he was an intern and she was a dietitian at Kings County Hospital, in Brooklyn. They brought up two sons in Flatbush. When the boys left home, Bella got her teaching certification and began working with children who had learning disabilities. In her seventies, however, retinal disease diminished her vision, and she had to stop working. A decade later, she became almost completely blind. Felix no longer felt safe leaving her at home alone, and in 2001 he gave up his practice. They moved to Orchard Cove, a retirement community in Canton, Massachusetts, outside Boston, where they could be closer to their sons.

“I didn’t think I would survive the change,” Felix said. He’d observed in his patients how difficult the transitions of age could be. Examining his last patient, packing up his home, he felt that he was about to die. “I was taking apart my life as well as the house,” he recalled. “It was terrible.”

… Her blindness and recent memory troubles have made her deeply dependent. Without him, I suspect, she would probably be in a nursing home. He helps her dress. He administers her medicines. He makes her breakfast and lunch. He takes her on walks and to doctors’ appointments. “She is my purpose now,” he said. Bella doesn’t always like his way of doing things. “We argue constantly—we’re at each other about a lot of things,” Felix said. “But we’re also very forgiving.”

He does not feel this responsibility to be a burden. With the narrowing of his own life, his ability to look after Bella has become his main source of self-worth. “I am exclusively her caregiver,” he said. “I am glad to be.” And this role has heightened his sense that he must be attentive to the changes in his own capabilities; he is no good to her if he isn’t honest with himself about what he can and can’t do.

The whole thing here.