“Organ recital,” announces Wendy, my oldest friend from childhood, as we set off on a birthday hike in a nature preserve near her house. We have been celebrating our birthdays together for 50 years, as preteens and then through high school, college, marriage, families, and into where we are now. Which is what? We are Boomers, a gigantic generation that doesn’t like to consider itself as older, even as we breach 60 and 70.
I know what Wendy means by organ recital because her parents, both gone, did that, so I launch into my health update. My left knee is intermittently sore, but I’m basically fine, I tell her, except for increasingly feeling like a collection of organs and body parts that must be evaluated by an array of doctors who will tell me what to worry about. Wendy says she, too, is fine, basically, after starting a medication she initially rejected. It means she can no longer say, “nope, not me, I don’t take anything.”
We both are aware we won’t always be like this. We will change, either slowly or all at once. I came to this awareness early. In my 20s, my mother died quickly from a painful cancer, insisting, as she tried to protect me, that she was “going to beat this.”
Much later, my father, a retired doctor, chose to end his life at age 90, disabled from Parkinson’s Disease. At the time there was no California law covering assisted death, but even if there had been, he would not have qualified. Physically, he could have persevered for more than 6 months. Emotionally, he could not. He could barely move but was fiercely independent, refusing to have a nurse or aide until his final weeks. He was direct about where he kept his important papers, how he would make his exit, who would collect his body—to the point where the last few times I saw him I wanted to say, “I know, I know all that”—so he wouldn’t tell me again.
Boomers don’t want to retire or give up marathons. We don’t believe we’ll need caregiving any time soon.
And yet it has stayed with me, not merely the copious reminders, but the way he refused to look away. I think about it often as I contemplate my future. My generation, we are the great explainers. We wrote and read books about sexual development, pregnancy, birth, raising kids, and menopause, as if we were the first ones to experience those milestones. And now, old age and death.
But the question is, what exactly is old age these days? Senior? Elderly? No, it’s not what it used to be. We don’t want to retire or give up marathons. We don’t believe we’ll need caregiving any time soon. The Boomers are “the most death-denying generation in human history,” Sheldon Solomon, a psychology professor at Skidmore College, told Time magazine.
Yet I find myself wanting to say to friends, or to anyone who will listen: One day we are going to die. Yes, we have new medical treatments that are halting or curing the diseases of aging. There are people in my generation (and way more in younger ones) who believe they can hack their way to longevity. If you have enough money, there are preventive body and blood scans, biological age testing, regenerative joint therapies, IV vitamin infusions, encyclopedic shelves of supplements, and concierge specialists.
But still, we need to consider what we will do. You know, when despite those treatments, the time comes. For me, that means discussing the decisions with my husband and my kids. I want to be as clear as my father was. I will consider new treatments, within reason. It’s hard to imagine getting injections of a protein to block the signaling mechanisms that misfire when you age, when much of the world doesn’t have access to basic vaccines. I wish I could believe, as some scientists do, that there will be a time when we cure all disease. In the meantime, I follow commonsense rules: eat well, exercise, try to challenge my brain, keep up with friends. If I could morph into an outright optimist, I’d do that as well.
I want to be independent for as long as possible. I’m not sure how much outside help I would want, unless I was in stable condition, with hope for improvement. My husband and I have set aside money for medical contingencies, but I’m not sure anyone will be able to afford care in the future, or that I’d ever want around-the-clock care anywhere.
And I can’t imagine living at home, with my children continually caring for me. My daughter says she wants to help when we need it, but I tell her I don’t ever want her turning away from her own life and family to provide care. I understand it though, maybe too well. I wanted to be there for my parents, but I couldn’t be a nurse or end-of-life doula. I couldn’t bring myself to help my father lift his trembling palm to swallow the fatal dose of pills. I wish I had extended my own hand one last time.
‘I’m not sure anyone will be able to afford care in the future, or that I would ever want around-the-clock care anywhere.’
I try too hard to defer those considerations with my daughter because the truth is I’m not certain what I’d do if, no, when, I lose the capacity to take care of myself. I tell myself that, like my father, I would not want intensive care in an institution or at home. I know people who’ve happily moved to adult communities that offer a range of options, from independent units with access to health clubs and social activities to assisted living and nursing beds. I want to stay where I am but am aware that could change. “That’s one Depends change you owe me,” I’ll say to my daughter when I do a favor for her, but I know the root of that—avoidance.
Admittedly, I share my generation’s cognitive dissonance about aging. I am dubious, sometimes terrified, that I am getting older, yet I can’t avoid pondering it. Many of us don’t think we will necessarily fall prey to the diseases or accidents that killed our parents and grandparents, not if we do the right things. I have friends who take baggies full of supplements every day and they trust that they are going to live to be 120. I wish that for them, but I don’t think that’s where I’m headed.
The Boomers may be in denial, but our sheer number—about 73 million according to the 2020 Census—means there is more attention on aging. It can be overwhelming, as we are targeted for scams and bombarded by ads about caregiving, insurance, bunion-free shoes and shower doodads. But maybe we will be the generation that talks more openly about this stage of life. Remember the enthusiasm, in 1984, for “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”? We could be moving in that direction.
Who is going to pay for our care? Where will we live? What if we could be cryopreserved, engineered into robots or other AI-assisted replicas? At my local library, there is a growing list of books that consider aging—novels, memoirs, scientific accounts, investigations into the inequalities faced at the end of life. Recently I went to a Death Café there that offered a discussion about end-of-life care and options. I brought home flyers and showed them to my kids. I may have mentioned that they would be in the same file as my will.
When the organ recital is over, Wendy and I glide easily into other topics. I look at her and she doesn’t seem so different than she did in middle school, or in high school when we hiked up a hill called Skull Rock and thought we knew so much about life, or in college, where we realized we knew nothing.
We disagree on political and spiritual issues, but that doesn’t matter; we agree that life is fleeting. Wendy believes she will go on to another life, and I think that my ashes will end up in the ground, eventually part of other living things. She believes the universe has a plan; I think it’s a matter of genes, environment, luck. We say these things, and more. That is what matters. There will be health conditions in the future, and we will talk about them.
Katherine Seligman is a journalist and author in San Francisco. She won the 2019 PEN/Bellwether prize for her novel “At the Edge of the Haight.”
Photo credit: Shutterstock/Olivier Le Moal
