I was recently talking to some friends about the fact that I was writing , which I have just published. I may have used the word “old.” One woman immediately alerted me to be careful never to use the word “old” – “We are ‘older’ – not old,” she insisted.

This got me thinking. Everyone tiptoes around the problem of what to call older (or old) people, as if it were a kind of embarrassing condition to which we must not call too much attention.

Pensioners

Oh dear. Such a problem.

Old people in the UK were for many years referred to as old age pensioners (often shortened to pensioners or OAPs). Any woman over 60 (or man over 65) was deemed to be an OAP, correctly as they would be drawing a state pension. The qualifying ages have changed more recently.

Although the phrase was used descriptively, it immediately conjured up someone slightly bent over and possibly leaning on a cane, like those road signs to warn drivers to be careful of old people in the area.

Pensioners were assumed to be poor, to be living quiet lives and not likely to live very long. I’m not sure when it happened, but this term seems to have gone out of style.

Seniors and boomers

In the meantime, the word senior citizen or seniors became very popular in the US and has been growing in Britain.  Aside from the confusion with those in their last year of high school or college, both of whom were known as seniors in my day, this always had the unpleasant whiff of a euphemism to me.  Who, after all, would want to be called a junior? And this is only the reverse.

As my particular generation has aged, older people are sometimes referred to as baby boomers in a descriptive way. This at least has a more active image. The difficulty for me is the incidental association with the word ‘baby’, a patronising epithet for women that has always been deeply offensive to me. Sometimes this is shortened to boomers, often seen as pejorative.

And some words are used for more formal occasions, such as person of advanced years usually in an effort not to sound condescending. The more medical term geriatric and the somewhat jokey term oldster pop up from time to time.

Just occasionally, a word can actually seem respectful of older people. Derived initially from discussions about older people in other societies, the word elder came into fashion, with a mild overtone of wisdom. This is not really used much in ordinary parlance.

Sticks and stones

We all know that there are numerous words that imply an older person, particularly a woman, is decrepit, no longer able to think and, frankly, plain.

There is old crone, followed by old hag, old bag, old biddy and old crock. Not to mention old dear. Even superannuated, although ostensibly more respectful, is not something anyone would aspire to be.

When it comes to politics, the term blue rinse brigade suggests a more conservative (and possibly Conservative) bent. For those who don’t know, it used to be common for older women to rinse their grey hair with a blue dye, giving it a blue-ish tinge.

And then there are the more direct insults. My son, in his teens, referred to older people as crumblies or wrinklies. These, at least, added a bit of humour.

And finally, I can’t omit my favourite. A friend tells me that years ago, the French referred to vielles femmes (old ladies), très vielles femmes (very old ladies) and son et lumières – the latter being the sound and light show often played onto ancient castles or monuments in rural France.

I can just visualise the kind of old lady that might be compared to an ancient monument, but it certainly isn’t me.

I have tried to track this down to more recent usage, but alas, none of my French friends could help here.

Personally, I take it all with a bit of a laugh – we are who we are, and we would smell as sweet by any other name.

A version of this article is published in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older, Glenmore Press.  Available on Amazon and elsewhere.

You have just become a grandmother – or perhaps you have been one for a long time. It is so very exciting to have a new baby in your life. Not to mention all the other stages, from toddlers right on up.

But one thing you will have noticed is that the arrival of grandchildren affects your relationships with a wide range of other people.

Your relations with own your son or daughter may well deepen or, in a few cases, deteriorate. A new child inevitably brings new shared joys but can sometimes bring out old tensions.  Your relations with your son- or daughter-in-law will also change. They come as part of the package of enjoying that new child, especially if it is a daughter-in-law who had the baby. You may have found that you need to tread carefully not to be seen as ‘interfering’.

But most surprisingly, there are yet another set of relationships that may become a more visible part of your life – with the other set of grandparents.

The other parents

In my experience, the people our children choose to marry can come from any sort of family. They can be our own friends or neighbours, of course, but they very rarely are. As often as not, they are completely different in at least one way, if not many. Increasingly, they may be of a different nationality or religion or class. Or, indeed, political leanings.

They may be very upright when you are more of an ex-hippy or the other way around. They may be born-again Christians, when you have never held any religious beliefs. Or they may be obsessed with cruises to distant parts when you would not dream of going on one or, for that matter, could not afford it. And on and on.

Perhaps they are absolutely lovely people, and you are all pleased that your children introduced you to each other.

You just never know.

Meeting up

You probably met the other parents first at the wedding, if not shortly before. And you may have had no reason to see them again. Or you may meet often for family occasions.  You may feel, in the interests of general friendliness, it is valuable to establish good relations early on. This may or may not be reciprocated.

My mother, a very intellectual American woman, decided it would be a good idea for her and my father to meet my new husband’s mother (and her current man) when visiting London. His mother was working class, a heavy drinker and easily intimidated by people she didn’t know.

This could not have been a combination made in heaven. I wasn’t there, but I hate to think what a long evening that was from everyone’s point of view.

Fellow grandparents

And then your respective children become parents – and suddenly you have an interest in common – the grandchildren.  This can make for some interesting, difficult or, if lucky, happy situations.

Some time ago, I wrote a book based on deep interviews with grandparents, and I found all sorts of different experiences.

At best, the respective grandparents liked each other and went to some joint trouble to make their children’s lives easier. They coordinated their schedules, for instance, to share out needed childcare. One set of prospective grandparents even met the other at the airport when the latter were coming in for the birth. Grandparents also cooperated when there was a specific need, such as when one young couple, suffering marital difficulties, needed time to talk together without the children.

On the other hand, there could also be serious tensions. Sometimes, there was an unspoken competition between the two sets of grandparents to see who could do most for the grandchildren. Or to become closer to them. Major disagreements over upbringing were also noted. One set of grandparents could be excessively religious – or not religious enough. Or too strict in their care.

Or other matters could arise. One grandmother, for instance, who put a high premium on good nutrition at all times, was very distressed that the other handed out too many sweet drinks and candies.

Sending out ripples

It is surprising how many steps that we take in life send out ripples way beyond those expected. This is an excellent example. You have a child, he or she grew up and fell in love, they produced a child – and suddenly you are involved with all sorts of new people and in new ways.

It can be a real bonus or a pain in the neck!

This article was first published on SixtyandMe.com

I write frequently for an online women’s magazine called Sixty and Me. It  is a wonderful place for older women to learn how to look better, feel better, be a better person and get more out of life. But this article does none of these things.

Yet it is on a subject that I find so interesting, I want to share it with you. It is about some evidence that people who are seriously ill can – in some unclear way – determine the timing of their death.

The nature of the evidence

When carrying out long and deep interviews, it sometimes happens that the people being interviewed raise issues that were never part of the initial research.This is what happened when I undertook a series of interviews with nurses, doctors and others who worked in hospice care for a book on the subject. My principal interest was in their motivations for such work and its impact on their lives.

But in the course of such discussions, many referred to particular patients who they remembered well – and issues arising from their interaction. And one of these issues was this matter of the timing of deaths. All of the patients involved were necessarily gravely ill and in the process of dying, as that is why they were receiving hospice care.

Timing over a matter of days or weeks

The first phenomenon here was the ability of some patients to hold off dying until some particular event of importance to them had come to pass.

One nurse mentioned that a very ill man was expecting his family to come from Australia to see him in England. To her surprise, he managed to stay alive until their arrival and then, soon after, died. But there were others who were keen to see a granddaughter married or a new grandchild born, who also managed to stay alive until the event. There were said to be more deaths following certain holidays, such as Christmas.

No one interviewed had an explanation for these events, but they were stated as facts – and happened too often to be taken as mere coincidence.

Since undertaking this research, I noted that there has been some discussion of the timing of deaths in the course of a year. It seems that there are notably more deaths at the beginning of a new year than in the last days of the previous year, suggesting that dying people ‘hold on’ to see the new year arrive. Indeed, there was particular evidence of this at the turning of the Millennium. Evidently, there were strikingly more deaths in the first week of 2000 than in the last week of 1999, as reported in the Guardian Newspaper (17 January 2000). The Associate Director of the National Council on Aging, commenting on the noted ability of seriously ill people to hang on until a significant event, said “The mechanisms are something of a mystery but the phenomenon is very real.”

Timing over a matter of days

But hospice staff also noted that some people seemed to find the right moment to die. Several cited examples where patients died at just that moment when certain circumstances changed. A number seemed to want to die alone.

A large family, for example, had been spending a lot of time with their dying relative over a period of days. But at one point, one of the visitors needed to deal with their car and the entire family went to the car park for a few minutes. Strangely, this was the time when the patient suddenly died.  Another nurse told of a wife who asked her very anxious husband to go make her a cup of tea. At the time, she was not drinking or eating, but the husband, wanting to please her, went on that errand. Before he could come back, she had died.

It was thought that patients wanted to make their passing easier for their relatives.

We shall never know.

Lessons 

And what can we learn from these stories?

It is possible that they are all coincidences and one shouldn’t make too much of the issue.

But it is also possible that our internal make-up is much more complicated than we tend to think. Links between mind and body are little understood.

I happen to find it fascinating

This article was first published by SixtyandMe.com

Not long ago, my husband said rather casually to me, “I wish I knew when I was going to die.” An important wish, indeed. He is 81.

But his concern was neither spiritual nor existential. He was wondering whether it was worth his while to have a knee replacement operation.

The complex issues of being old

Finding ourselves in what are inevitably our later years has many different aspects. Some people bemoan the fact of being old, loathe the many vicissitudes of ageing and have a strong fear of death.

Not me. I have always focussed on the positive at whatever age I have found myself – and this includes right now, having turned 80. Indeed, I have written a .

But this doesn’t mean that everything is easy. We have less and less energy. Our memories fade. Our bodies begin to show their age in one way or another – or perhaps I should say in many ways altogether.

I tend to summarise this as ‘the wheels begin to fall off’.

The knee operation

Which brings me back to this knee.

As many readers will already know, knee operations are not at all easy. Some proportion go wrong (you end up worse off than when you started) and there is a long period of recovery and rehabilitation.  My husband’s thoughts were very sensible: “If I knew I was going to die in a year, it wouldn’t be worth all the trouble. But if I had ten years, it would be worth thinking about.”

And he is right. It is a difficult decision.  I would bet there are plenty of others in the same situation. Or wondering whether to move house. Or whether to embark on some other major undertaking.

All our lives, we are taught to weigh decisions carefully, taking into account the costs and benefits, including the time available.  Yet here we are with a key variable completely missing from the calculation.

I wish I had an answer, but I don’t.

Would you really want to know?

But his simple question sent a number of ripples into my mental pond. Would we really want to know our expected date of expiry?

Yes, there are some decisions where a clear date of departure from this earth would be useful.

You could make more sensible medical decisions. And perhaps some others. You would know exactly when your things needed to be in order. You could say your good-byes in good time.

But this is undoubtedly a slippery slope. How would it affect your day-to-day relationships? Or the activities you undertake?

Would you be out there trying to fulfil every longstanding wish, ticking off the items on the famous ‘bucket list’? Or would you simply turn your face to the wall some time in advance?

Or would you be the proverbial deer caught in the headlights – so much to do, so many people to see, not certain where to turn?

Socrates

It is strange the things that you remember. I distinctly remember my mother telling me, when still a teenager, about Socrates.

He had been condemned to death and was due to be administered a dose of hemlock (a known poison). While it was being prepared, he asked to be allowed to finish learning a particular melody on his flute.

On being asked why he wanted to do this, he was reputed to have said, “When else will I learn it?”

I don’t know if this is apocryphal, but it is a good story. Doing something meaningful until the very end.

This was first published by SixtyandMe.com.

A few months ago, my husband was approached by a young researcher, doing a study on the frail elderly and clearly keen to approach all such people with the right attitude.  Yet once you have the need for a particular ‘attitude’, instead of a normal interaction with another human being, the trouble begins.

Her concern was to determine whether he was frail enough for the study. Unfortunately, she asked questions in such a way as to suggest that she thought he was probably a bit dim.

This did not go down well. He, being a former academic, was trying to get her to define her terms.

In the end, she decided he was not frail enough, which I am sure was right.

I would make a good guess that she was glad to be rid of him. But not more than he was glad to have avoided involvement with her.  The whole experience did not leave a good taste in his mouth. Nor mine, when he told me about it.  We do not want to be talked down to.

The view from ‘below’

The experience brought back memories of many years ago.

When my son was just two years old, I realised he had a mindset that I had never seen in any other child of my acquaintance. It took some watching and some thinking, but I finally got it pinned down.  He simply did not accept child status.

As far as he was concerned, he was not less equal than the larger people he came into contact with – whether parents, childminders, teachers, our friends or anyone else.  Yes, he needed to learn from them (when he wanted to) and yes, they would insist on bossing him about, but somehow, in his mind, he was their equal. And he squirmed with visible discomfort when confronted with clear condescension.

This continued as he grew older. As a young child, he loved collecting facts of all kinds and had a good memory for them. Even at the age of five, he had no reluctance to correct teachers when their facts were incorrect.

Nor us, of course.

I remember trying to explain this to friends. If we found ourselves on another inhabited planet, I suggested, we would soon realise that we needed to learn the language, the customs, the history and the belief systems of the local people.

BUT we would be darned if we would be talked down to. We were their equals ­– we just had a lot to learn.

Why shouldn’t a small child feel the same way?

And why older people?

Yes, there is a natural tendency (of which I think we were less guilty than many other parents) to talk down to children. But then it seems to go into reverse as we age. There is an even worse tendency to condescend to the old.

There seems to be something about a lot of wrinkles that brings out a wish to talk down.

This is exacerbated when the older person has the bad luck to be in a position of dependency, such as being hospitalised. The “how are we today, Ann?”, asked in a high voice, is not something I have any wish to experience.

This tendency to condescend to old people, when you think about it, is very odd. We are the people who have seen so much more of life and have handled so many more difficult situations.

What happened to the reverence with which ‘elders’ were traditionally regarded? Weren’t we once assumed to have some wisdom?

We should fight back, like my son, whenever we can.

A version of this article was first published in my book The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older, Glenmore Press. Available on Amazon and elsewhere.