questions and answers

LATE ADULTHOOD

Life has been a series of developments! During your middle years, you saw transformation in all areas. Physically, just about every part of your body experienced changes and you put your childbearing years behind you. Cognitively, with formal education concluded, mental challenges came from your job and you grew into the role of expert at your work. And, socially, you saw a big difference in with whom you spent your time. After years of most of your non-working hours revolving around your children, you launched them from home leaving more time to interact with your friends. Now you are 65 and entering late adulthood. You anticipate you will continue to morph into new versions of you in the latter years of your life!

Surprise! You have a boomerang child. Katherine moves back in with you, assuring you it’s only for six months. She wants to give up the expense of her apartment in order to boost savings for a house down payment. You’re happy to help her and have her around, but living together again under the same roof is an adjustment!

Yippee! You retire! Although money will be tight, you think you can afford to stop working at this point. You feel a degree of melancholy over leaving your career and coworkers, both of which have been a big part of decades of your life. But, on the other hand, you are excitedly looking forward to this next phase, life beyond full-time work.

You continue to be grateful you and Juan stuck it out and worked through your tough times. Although retirement brought some adjusting, you two got into a great groove of enjoying activities together as well as each exploring your own individual interests and friendships. The relationship is filled with romance and respect and you’re glad to be sharing these years with your partner!

You’ve slowed down in the last few years. That being said, you’re in good shape and maintaining strength and stamina. You attribute this to being active and making nutritious eating choices. Taking charge of your health in these ways has also helped you stay at a healthy weight and avoid needing to take medication (e.g., no high cholesterol medication for you!).

Speaking of inevitability of death, at the local library you and your friend Sarah attend a class titled “Can We Escape Death?” A scientist covers one theory that proposes genes are programmed with a time limit and another that the body wears out over time. Both are plausible but a definitive answer for why humans age and die is elusive. It’s a fascinating class that leaves you and Sarah with much to discuss over coffee after!

Your beloved aunt and uncle, who were the epitome of youthful spirits, passed away within months of each other. You mourn their loss, but you can’t help but be inspired by how they seized life and lived theirs to the fullest to the very end.

Life brings its own changes to your close family members. Gwen’s husband passes away, which causes a great deal of grief for her, you, and everyone in the family. Gwen moves nearby and you support her as she continues to adjust to widowhood. Your nephew Ben has been a support for his mom but from afar, as he lives out of state with his partner and twin children. Speaking of children, your adult children are busy shaping their own lives. They’re in middle adulthood and are wrapped up with building their careers and cultivating their own social circles.

Friends, glorious friends! Your friends are certainly enriching your later years. Your close friendships with Alex, Huda, Michael, and Sarah have endured. Over the years you integrated others such as work colleagues, neighbors, and parents of your children’s friends into your social circle. Texting makes it easy to stay connected and retirement gives you plenty of time to see each other.

Financially, you are somewhat challenged. Your retirement planning didn’t set you up to be able to afford a comfortable quality of life. Whether to help pay the bills or because they miss work, some of your peers have gotten jobs in their retirement. You contemplate the idea of returning to paid employment and come to terms with the fact that you could use the money. After searching around for a fit, you land a part-time job.

As an involved grandparent, you are happily spending time with your granddaughter Lucy! You take care of her several days a week while her parents are working, attend her school and extracurricular events, and regularly have her over for dinners and sleepovers. Your life is filled with joy with Lucy in it!

There is a cobweb hanging from your living room ceiling and you want to get rid of it! But, uh oh! As you are standing on a stepladder to reach it, you lean over too far and fall to the floor. You don’t think you break any bones, but you wrench your back and feel banged up. You take it easy for the rest of the week and wonder whether you should be asking for help for these sorts of housekeeping tasks.

Your nephew Ben and his family are in town. You have them, Gwen, your children and their partners, and Lucy over for dinner. It’s not often that you are all in the same place at the same time. It is a meaningful and memorable family gathering!

Overall, how are you feeling these days? Your well-being is high, meaning you are generally happy and satisfied. Managing stress and maintaining a positive attitude are two things helping you to feel a sense of vitality and contentment as you face what life has in store.

You can name a handful of peers who have had a stroke or heart attack. In fact, Michael is one of them. He had a mild heart attack, but recovered nicely and modified his lifestyle to reduce the risk of a repeat attack. You, though, are healthy! Your doctor applauds you for your health-promoting habits of eating right and exercising, and encourages you to keep them up.

You find that your religious/spiritual beliefs bring you quite a bit of comfort at this point in your life. As you get closer to the end of life, your beliefs help you as you process the topics of your purpose, connection to others, and the meaning of life.

You observe firsthand that aging is not a “one size fits all” process. When thinking about people you know who are around the same age, you see such a range—from marathon runner to nursing home resident. You realize chronological age doesn’t necessarily correlate well with people’s physical and cognitive well-being. There’s quite a bit of variability, from frail to sprightly.

You’re spending your retirement discovering new parts of your identity or parts that were always there, but you didn’t have time to explore. Most people value the freedom of late adulthood—having more free time and indulging in the opportunities that free time affords. You get that!

Physical aging continues! You develop some annoying issues related to arthritis, you’re not standing as tall as you once were, your back has been aching, and wrinkles have taken over every inch of your body. You’ve accumulated a collection of physical support products—pillow, knee brace, comfort shoes, compression socks—that you use to decrease discomfort and aid in your mobility. All in all, though, it’s not so bad!

The local senior center is requesting donations to help older adults in need. In the request, they describe how disparities are particularly pronounced during late adulthood. A large percentage of older adults live in poverty, have restricted access to healthcare, and experience a higher incidence of disease. You’re not the epitome of health and wealth, but you acknowledge that your late adult years would have been different had you experienced the disparities that some people have. You put together a bag of donations.

Alex and partner move to a retirement community with all the trimmings! From a swimming pool and tennis courts to restaurants and a movie room, everything one could want is right there on property. Alex invites you to come visit and you start packing your bags!

You were telling your neighbor about a restaurant you had gone to but the restaurant’s name escaped you! You’ve noticed this happening more often lately, where you can recall much of events from your life, but some of the details are harder to pull from memory. It’s a little bothersome but you’re glad your memory declines aren’t worse!

Your health insurance offers a complementary ADL and IDL wellness check. ADL stands for Activities of Daily Living (e.g., bathing, toileting, self-feeding) and IDL for Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (e.g., cleaning, meal prep, managing money). These are ways to evaluate one’s functioning and ability to live independently. You take them up on it and someone comes to evaluate your functional status. They find you are doing well and there are no concerns. That confirmation feels good to get!

The evaluation of your functional status got you thinking about your living arrangements. In middle adulthood, you imagined that after retirement you would plan to be near at least one of your children. You are still thinking this is the best plan, at least for now.

You stay active and eat right. Lifestyle choices like these have helped you optimize your health. You’ve had no major health issues so far and plan on continuing with solid health habits as a way to keep yourself as healthy and strong as you can going forward.

3

You’ve been doing a lot of returning to the past and evaluating the significance of previous experiences, people, and events in your life. You like to recount memories and share them with others, especially your family and friends. You find this process of reviewing your life to be useful.

Your best friend Alex has a health scare when diagnosed with melanoma. Thankfully, it is stage 1, being that it’s an isolated spot and the cancer hasn’t spread. The melanoma is removed and a full recovery is expected. Alex has always been good about getting periodic skin exams. This preventative practice turned out to be a lifesaver!

The days are long but the years are short. Life continues to move ahead and you marvel at how quickly time passes.

CAREER AND RETIREMENT During the last stage of adulthood, you embraced being a “retiree” and uncovering parts of your identity when had time to do so. Many of your days each week were spent in a work-capacity, as you found it necessary to secure a part-time job for the extra money. You got into a comfortable groove, though, with how you spent your days. FINANCIAL PLANNING Your prior financial planning was not enough to set you up to live comfortably during your late adult years. This resulted in financial insecurity in your post-retirement life. You needed to return to work in some capacity in order to supplement your retirement savings. This was not ideal but as you were working part-time in your late adult years, you tried to remind yourself that you enjoyed spending your money in your younger years. HEALTH AND WELL-BEING In late adulthood you saw signs of aging in just about every aspect of your body and mind, signs that got progressively more apparent. Nonetheless, for the most part your older years were healthy ones. You attribute this to good genes, but also to your healthy lifestyle. Eating right and staying active helped you thrive. You certainly acknowledge that if you had had health issues or a major disease, your late adulthood experiences would have been different in every way. Your declining health will be expected when it occurs, but until then you will continue to be intentional in your health practices as a way to maintain your mobility, independence, and overall health as much as you can. Having a positive attitude and taking aging in stride helped you successfully cope with the declines and losses in late adulthood. Another thing that helped was reminiscing and reviewing your life, a process that brought you some serenity. Overall, you enjoyed your late adulthood years! LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS Your family members, friends, coworkers, and the myriad of cast of individuals who have come and gone in your life over the years have contributed to who you are today. Particularly in late adulthood, your rich social life helped you in many ways such as providing you with companionship and preventing loneliness. Without them in your life, you’re not sure you would have coped with aging as well as you did. You certainly recognize that your relationships had a meaningful impact as you navigated through your life. The program may be over, but you can continue to reflect on your experiences and imagine where life will take your virtual adult next!