Rosalynn Carter died today at the age of 96, shortly after entering hospice care. She is survived by her husband of 77 years, Jimmy. Given Jimmy’s 99 years and devotion to her, I won’t be in the least surprised if he boards his train in the very near future. I’ve learned a lot about humans in my thirty plus years in geriatrics and one of them is that elderly men who choose not to survive the death of their long time spouse often don’t. I was in high school during the Carter presidency. He wasn’t held in particularly high regard in the social circles of Seattle through which I moved as a teenager. He was somewhat naive as a politician on the national stage. But for decade after decade both halves of the couple have served as shining exemplars of humble service to humanity. I doubt we will ever see as good an ex-president again. The temptations of world wide celebrity and highly paid speaking tours and multi-million dollar book deals are just too great.
Jimmy was a World War II vet. There aren’t a lot of them left. To have been 17 in 1945, one must have been born in 1928 because math so in 2023, you turned 95. Given that life expectancy for men is mid 70s, the surviving World War II vets are the outliers. I have a few on my VA house call panel. You don’t get to be that age if you haven’t taken care of yourself and made good life choices so they tend to be healthier than my Vietnam era vets who often didn’t. We’re reaching the tipping point which happens for all historical epochs where World War II is passing from living adult human memory. In another decade or so there will only be child memories of the events left in some very aged people and then, another ten or so years later, there will be no living human memory left of the Anschluss, Pearl Harbor, Dresden, the Holocaust, Stalingrad or any of the other moments that seared public consciousness in the late 30s and early 40s of the last century.
This process, which has always happened, turning real memories of real events into history and myth and legend, will continue on throughout the 21st century as each of the tumultuous decades of the 20th century recedes further and further into the past. ‘Happy Days’, the TV series for young people of the 70s which was a nostalgic look at adolescence a couple of decades earlier, will have its 50th anniversary in a couple of months. The lead edge of the Baby Boom is just a couple of years shy of turning 80. It won’t be all that much longer until the Summer of Love and Woodstock fade out of living adult memory as well. And I suspect the Boom is going to rage, rage against the dying of the light. They remain trapped in their thinking of themselves as the younger generation. And they tend to internalize the outliers as norms. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain to patients in their 70s and their normal symptoms of aging are not related to disease. They always have a story about someone ten or twenty years older than they who doesn’t have their issues and they’re upset as they think they are entitled to the same good fortune. They don’t seem to realize that these people they hear about, often through media reports, are extreme outliers and that’s why they generate media interest to begin with.
I just passed the half way point of my 62nd year this past week. And I can tell that I am not the same being either physically or cognitively that I was a couple of decades ago. I don’t fuss about it for the most part. There’s not a lot I can do about the aging process. Anyone who thinks that a geriatrician has some sort of elixir of youth needs a psychiatrist. I can’t fix my aging problems any more than I can fix those of my patients. What I can do is sort out the things that have helpful interventions from those that don’t. I also seem to spend a lot of time adjusting to my ever changing body and continually making new friends with it as it decides to pursue new and unusual patterns brought on by time. Geriatric medicine really boils down to a couple of essential principles. How to keep people on their feet without falling over, how to keep people from poisoning themselves with medications they may not need, and how to keep people eating and dealing appropriately with the waste products of metabolism. The general health system does very badly with most of these so we geriatricians have carved out a niche area which no one else really wants to fill.
My biggest aging challenge at the moment involved my memorization skills. I used to be able to memorize enormous amounts of information relatively quickly but that skill seems to have subsided some with age. I can still learn things but it takes longer and requires more perseverance on my part than it used to. The play I am currently rehearsing, Seven Santas, is a bit of a challenge. I have a monologue (not overly long and it’s coming – I can now do it with just my cheat sheet (first letter of each word) and without script but I’m not quite at the point of being able to it completely off book. (I have one more week). What’s defeating me is the 40 minute scene where are Seven Santas and Mrs. Claus are busy having knock down drag outs at one wild AA meeting and where I have a hundred lines and very few in the form of direct dialogue. Have one more week to get that down as well. There are a couple of cross country plane flights in there in which I can work on lines – if I can stay awake.
The third book is out and orderable. You can get it on Amazon or any of the big national retailers through their on line presence. But I always find it more fun to ask your local bookstore to order it for you. They can always then order a couple of extra copies for store display. I will do some signings in the next few months but not before the holidays. I’ve got too much going on. If you want me to sign copies for holiday gifts or other such things, I am happy to do it, just slide into my DMs or give me a call and we can make arrangements.
Three more work days before a couple of days off. And then twelve days before Seven Santas are unleashed on an unsuspecting public.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 