When an 85-year-old resident spent the night with her boyfriend, her aides made her a Do Not Disturb sign. The Hebrew Home at Riverdale has been recognized as one of the best nursing homes in the country. The facility offers an on-site audiology clinic, 24-hour nursing care, occupational therapy, and more. Among the services offered […]
Sometimes, all it takes is a moment of true presence with another person for a profound shift to happen. The scene: mid-October, 2015, New York City. The World’s Largest Eye-Gazing Event. I’m a helper for the event, and I’m set up in Herald Square, in front of Macy’s. I carry a sign that reads: Where […]
Don’t let old age be wasted on the old. Sometimes I feel smarter than I was 30-something years ago. I don’t remember how to do Algebra or how to diagram a sentence, but I can read several newspaper articles about seemingly disparate issues and immediately see how they are connected. Like David Foster Wallace on […]
I want my daughter to see aging as the expansive process it can be. I want her to remain curious about, and not just terrified of, what’s inevitable about being alive: It is all temporary. I was present for my maternal grandmother’s death. It happened while she was in hospice care at my mother’s home, […]
Perhaps we hold certain stereotypes that prevent us from recommending mental health treatment for our elders. Do we believe change is only possible for younger generations? A few years ago, my mother-in-law, Joan, developed an infection following a root canal. Her dentist prescribed penicillin, which triggered an awful allergic reaction—she actually stopped breathing. “Joan, stay […]
All that floats from my breath when I think of you, blowing kisses into the wind, are thank yous. Dear Mom: If you were still here to sit with me and listen to a litany of everything I should have understood about us long, long ago, I would tell you so many things. I would […]
My life doesn’t look the way that she thought women’s lives should look—no husband, no children, an unkempt house, and a penchant for oversharing on the Internet—but is she proud of me? For a while now, I’ve been writing a eulogy for my grandmother. I don’t know when, or even if, I’ll ever give it. […]
A highly skilled work force to drive our economic engine is only possible when people have the care, education, and health they need. International Women’s Day earlier this month saw an outpouring of social media about the status of women in the world, which varies greatly across countries and continents. Here in the U.S., women occupy […]
While 30- and 40-something moms were having it out with their daughters over makeup and risque dresses, my mom was going through menopause. When I was 10 years old, my mother aged an entire decade in one night. It remains one of the single most shocking episodes of my childhood—which was really very tame, I […]
Our attitude of shock and awe toward Nationwide’s commercial proves we still live in a culture that sanitizes or avoids death. Despite a final-hour upset over the Seahawks in the Patriots favor, and Katy Perry’s flaming dress, which garnered an instant Buzzfeed comparison list, the most talked about element of the 2015 Superbowl online is the Nationwide […]
New research says that conservative men stop having sex sooner than liberal men. Lynn Beisner says that’s because most conservative men make sex all about them. Last week we learned the results of a Harvard research study that tracked the lives of men who attended the university between 1939 and 1944. Many of the findings […]
