Boyle McCauley News

Since 1979 • April-May 2024 • Circulation 5000

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On Being 80

Reflections on a family milestone

I recently attended my aunt’s eightieth birthday party. It was a wonderful sunny afternoon and we all basked in the joy of a life lived with intensity and insight. The party was attended by my aunt’s friends and a smattering of younger relatives, such as nieces, nephews, and their children. During the affair I was able to talk to a number of 80 year olds. Most of my aunt’s friends were her peers and had been her friends since young adulthood. These women (most of the 80 year olds were women, though some still had husbands) were vibrant, engaging, and enjoying their lives.

When I asked them what it was like to be 80, the resounding answer was “wonderful.” Wonderful was repeated many times and they talked about their gratitude for being alive and for lives well lived. My aunt read a poem definitively saying she wished to live longer. One of the women volunteered at a hospice because she wished to continue to make a contribution. My aunt and others at the gathering were very much into genealogy, exploring their family histories, making discoveries about who their ancestors were and how they had shaped their lives.

This event brought me back to The Mature Mind by Eugene Cohen and his description of the stages of aging. I have already talked about the first two stages, Re-evaluation and Liberation, and written about McCauley residents exemplifying these stages. Cohen calls this third stage “Summing Up” and describes it as follows: “. . . people in this stage feel more urgently the desire to find larger meaning in the story of their lives through a process of review, summarizing, and giving back . . . through volunteerism, community activism and philanthropy. The Inner Push to sum up is often expressed creatively though recapitulation and review of one’s life through personal storytelling memoirs, and autobiography . . . oral histories . . . genealogies . . . .”

Cohen goes on to say this need to sum up is likely fuelled by changes in the brain. Brain development, he writes, “likely creates a richer, more vivid experience because the brain is drawing on a broader palette of resources.” This is to say, at 80 we not only have more to recall, but the telling is more enjoyable.

Or, to quote my aunt’s niece who made the birthday toast, “though we choose to celebrate the length of our lives, it is their essence that is more worthy of recognition. To that end, let us make a toast to times shared, advice given and sought, wisdom imparted, and stories remembered.”

Sherry lives in McCauley and is a block carrier for the paper.

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