“It’s not fair!” – how often have we heard that from our children or grandchildren when they are playing a game or being punished or, indeed, at any number of other points in the day?

And they are right – life is very unfair. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I feel that luck plays a huge part in our lives. Possibly the largest part of all.

Luck in our health, luck in our genes – and even luck in our personality and character.

The view of children

Children are very quick to point out all the unfairness in life.

Their friend got a better computer for Christmas. Another friend’s mother lets him stay up late. Another friend never has to practise her violin. It goes on and on.

Sometimes, it is just where we are in life.

My daughter, age seven, and I were on our way to the Christmas concert that her piano teacher held every year for her pupils to play for their collective parents. “It’s not fair,” she argued in her nervousness, “the other children have been learning for much longer and of course they can play better.”

I did my best to reassure her that she would do fine. Which she did.

Years passed, and we were again on our way to exactly the same occasion, but she was now age 14. “It’s not fair…,” she exclaimed, with no memory of the previous occasion, “the young kids get to play easy songs with two fingers, and I have to play The Moonlight Sonata.”

Again, I tried to reassure her that she would do fine, which she did. But I must admit that I could not resist pointing out the earlier discussion and may have left her feeling she could not win.

And, from her point of view, she was right. Life did not feel fair.

We do our best to discuss with our children how no, life isn’t fair, and we all need to learn to live with it. Or, on occasion, we try to explain why life is fair, to help them see the positive side.

Or we find some other words to move the conversation on. It’s not a discussion at which anyone really wins.

The view of adults

Adults are no different on this issue.

A young man will complain that one particular friend always gets the pretty girls, when he has no special qualities to attract them.

An older woman will feel slighted when a male colleague is promoted above her, although she is clearly more talented at the job.

There are, of course, numerous other circumstances on which I could draw. Sometimes, we are quick to find an explanation that assures us of our case.

The girls don’t really like that friend, but they like the fact he has a car. It is because the employer is prejudiced against women that he has promoted the man – or perhaps it is discrimination against older people.

We have many such explanations up our sleeves, sometimes correct ones.

Growing older

Growing older brings out so many inequities one by one, until you lose track of any sense of fairness. It is, I feel, a driving force of much of our lives.

Most visibly, there is good health. Some people seem to be born with a strong constitution and the ability to fight off whatever diseases afflict them.

Others fall at the first hurdle, dying young from unexpected cancer or other disease affecting young people. Or, indeed, they die horribly in a car accident, as did my younger sister not yet out of her 20s.

As we age, our bodies test us constantly and sometimes, the heart or a kidney or a lung or even an innocent-looking nerve gone rogue gets the upper hand. We are left unable to lead a full life or, perhaps, disabled by pain. This is clearly not fair.

But health is only the beginning. Where most people seek the warmth and happiness of marriage (or close partnership, the legalities are not important), this seems to elude some of us to the end.

And then there are the broken marriages. How much pain is represented in the statistics of divorce – the marriage ended due to a constantly roving eye or alcoholism or downright boredom.

It is total luck, in my view, that the hopes of some young brides come roughly true while others fall by the wayside because these contingencies could not remotely have been foreseen.

And then there are the children, and subsequent grandchildren, who get themselves born – or not. I did not know it beforehand – I thought naively that the interests and personalities of your children were roughly predictable.

How wrong could I have been? Some seem to come out of the womb ready to please, to fit in, to make a good life for themselves. Others make life difficult for everyone around them and, most of all, for themselves. It is certainly not fair, one way or the other.

Life’s rich tapestry is not rich in the same way for one and all. Most of us struggle along as best we can and feel pleased when something works out.

Our own efforts

Some like to think that any success was due to their own talent and hard work. And they may be right. “The harder I work, the more luck I have,” you hear people say.

But having those very skills – the talent, resourcefulness and perseverance that helped them work hard – must be seen as luck in the first place. They might have been born differently.

The same is true for health. Some will declare that their own good health is down to the fact that they always ate healthy food, never smoked and took lots of exercise.

You can readily agree. But perhaps you should also question what qualities such people had deep within them that provided the disposition to pursue that course. It still comes back to luck, in my view.

What can we do?

We can have good luck or bad or, for that matter, in-between. Basically, life is just unfair.

There is little more that can be said. I can only offer the phrase that French parents seem to offer their children, when asked a difficult question – “C’est comme ça”, they say (that’s the way it is).

I always thought that is not much of an explanation of anything, but it will have to do.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was first published on SixtyandMe.com

This is on Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/24y7A5f) and is very pleasing because it is from a different point of view:

“This was an especially poignant read for me, as my grandmother passed away earlier this year. Through most of my adult life, I only contacted her occasionally, and of course I now regret that. However, I was blessed to have lived with her as a child and shared that part of my life with her. I am also glad I shared some of my artistic successes with her – she was an artist herself, and I wanted to ensure she knew that I continued that tradition and talent.

With that in mind, I went into reading this book girded for heartache, tears, and joy. I was not disappointed. The breadth of quotations is astounding and on point. Every person should read this book, whether they knew their grandparents at all or not, are grandparents themselves or not. It will have you in cathartic tears.”

For more information or to buy, go to my Amazon page

The Granny Who Stands on Her Head is not a book about being a granny, nor is it a book about yoga postures. It IS a book about being an older woman, liking that fact and enjoying life to the full, including doing headstands.  I wrote it and I am two months short of turning 80.

I decided to write this book because somewhere in the middle of my seventies, I realised that I liked being old.  Before that, I probably didn’t really think of myself as being old. Many of us don’t.

This made me stop and question why I liked being old.

There are plenty of things to be said against it and i write about them in the book. There is the failing health, the diminished energy and the frightful memory.

We need to think about giving up certain things, like a well-loved house or apartment that is too large, and driving as much as we used to – if at all.

Moreover, friends are dying and we begin to think about dying ourselves.

Yet the surprising thing about being old is how much continues as before. We continue to do most the things we always liked to do. This may be singing, as in my case, or it may be sewing or making pottery. If we cooked before, we cook now. And many of us have just as much sex as ever.

And the equivalent downside is that many of the things we have always disliked continue much as before as well.  I happen to have hated shopping all my life and I still do. I have worried much too much all my life and I still do. And I get particularly cranky when my computer is down.

BUT all this having been said, there are real plusses to becoming old. Many of us have the very real pleasures of grandchildren, who light up our lives. Our friendships – and often our marriages – are stronger than ever.

And most of all, being old means you have had a lot of experience of life and you know who you are – both your strengths and your weaknesses. You tend to have become comfortable in your own skin. As a result, you tend to feel much more free to do what you want – and not what you don’t want. How wonderful is that!

I hope that the title conjures up all these thoughts.  I am old, I am a granny, but I love yoga and I love standing on my head. It brings a freedom and it just feels good.

You will find The Granny Who Stands on Her Head as a paperback or an e-book on Amazon or other e-readers, such as Apple or Kobo.  It will make a wonderful present for any reflective older woman.

In recent years, we have all become conscious of the hidden army of people known as ‘carers’ (‘caregivers’ in the US).

These are the people who look after a frail (or confused) family member or friend. They may be daughters (or sons) looking after an elderly parent or, perhaps, a sibling. Or they may be spouses looking after one another.

Parents of disabled children are also described in this light. These are frequently older women, but they can be of any age or either gender. Even children under 18 sometimes find themselves in this role.

You may well know someone in this circumstance, or it may be you. We all feel for them, as caregiving is a difficult situation. It can take over one’s entire life, especially if the carer is living with the person they care for and get little respite.

The carer I knew best

I became aware of the existence of carers when I was relatively young, because my husband’s favourite aunt was one. She had found herself in the traditional role (in England) of the youngest daughter who never married but stayed home to look after her increasingly frail mother.

She was not relieved of those responsibilities until her mother died, when she was already in her late 40s and rather worn down.

In her case, perhaps unusually, she blossomed soon after. She married a very nice older widower and began to substitute regular visits to church to equally regular visits to the pub.

They moved to a new house and she had a good life for many years until he suffered a stroke and she became a carer all over again.

Semi-carers

But there is another category of people who are not the principal carer and so are almost completely overlooked – namely, what I would call ‘semi-’ or ‘supplementary’ carers. These are an even larger group of people whose lives are affected by someone who is physically or mentally ill or disabled.

Despite my familiarity with the pressures of being a principal carer, it never occurred to me that many other people can also be caught up in the web created by illness and disability.

This awakening came when my daughter-in-law was diagnosed with cancer not long after her baby son was born. (I hasten to say she is fine now.)

Of course, my son had to take on all sorts of responsibilities not normally expected of a young husband and father. But so, too, did many other family members.

My husband and I became very active baby-sitters and general helpers-out. We set up our house with all the accoutrements of babyhood – baby bed, highchair, baby clothes and so forth, so that he could come to us on short notice.

It was tiring and affected all sorts of decisions, such as whether to travel far from home. When I mentioned it to my doctor, he said immediately, “Yes, cancer affects the whole family – that is well known.”

In retrospect, it was not difficult to provide the help that we did, but it was difficult never knowing when we could be needed. Whatever our plans for the day, a phone call could arrive at any time asking us to come now. Your own life gets put slightly ’on hold’.

Indeed, I am not asking for sympathy, as being required to help to look after a small baby is a mixed blessing. Yes, it put pressures on us that had not existed before, but it also brought the pleasures of caring for a baby again. And it made us much closer to that grandchild, which has lasted over the years.

The wide impact of illness

But my experience made me stop and think about how many people are so affected. Not simply by cancer, but by any form of long-lasting illness or disability.

Perhaps there is a need to provide food for a family, where the mother can no longer cook, or take on the role of driving the ill person to hospital appointments.

There can be a need to keep the household going in all sorts of ways, such as general provisioning or sorting out bills. Not to mention helping with the children, including the simple problem of getting them to school.

There is no ‘system’ to sort out these issues. Some countries provide more state help than others, such as paid carers who come in to help with washing and dressing. But when you remove one person from the equation of running a family, you immediately set up needs for all kinds of help.

Older women

In these situations, there are always some family members (or friends) who are more willing to step in to help than others. Indeed, it is common for people to assume that where someone competent is on the case, there is no need to offer more help.

This, of course, puts more pressure on those who are willing to help and can be the source of considerable family tensions.

And it is often we, older women, who find ourselves doing what we can. Perhaps it is because we have more time and fewer responsibilities of our own, especially if our children are grown up and we are no longer working.

But what starts as ‘just helping out a bit’ can easily escalate into doing more and more. And we do have other things we want to do.

Does this all sound familiar? If you had such a request, are you someone who says, “Yes, of course,” without even thinking about it? These are fundamental issues, concerning how we feel about ourselves and our role in our families.

Semi-carers are not put upon in heavy ways. It is just normal, day-to-day activities that need to be factored into whatever plans there were before.

I would not go so far as to say they deserve some form of recognition, but if you have friends in this circumstance, I would urge you to acknowledge their contribution.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was first published on SixtyandMe.com

People everywhere are fascinated by sex. I am not the first to say so. We wonder what other people do and when and what it means to them. And some wonder how long it continues.

When I was in my 20s, I naively thought that sex was only for the young. It simply did not occur to me that people over 40 continued with such activities.

This was nothing to do with any connection to child-bearing, but simply to the assumption that only the young had an appetite for – or interest in – sexual relationships.

As we age, we learn more – about this as well as everything else. There is, of course, much more research now.

Surveys will tell you about the extent of sexual activity at different ages. But few of these involve people over 70. And we are often reluctant to raise the issue with people we know.

The story of my parents

Of all the stories I tell about my family, the one which always gains immediate attention is one about my father.

My parents lived in an independent apartment in a retirement community in central Pennsylvania. They moved in when they were both roughly 80 and died within three months of each other, 10 years later. That was nearly 20 years ago.

After about five years, my mother developed vascular dementia. This is, of course, every married person’s worst fear. The husband or wife is no longer what they once were, but you are still married. And it is harder and harder to cope with the sheer physical demands.

My mother remained in the family apartment for well over a year, with a caretaker having been hired to help with her daily needs.

But eventually, it was too much for my father to manage and it was agreed that she would move to the Assisted Living section of the community. She was looked after, but he could pop in several times a day to see her.

He rarely complained, at least to me. It was just something that had happened.

An affair begins at 90

In the meantime, his eyesight had worsened, and he was losing one of his great pleasures – reading. He listened to a lot of audiobooks (and complained that there was no easy way to find the place where you fell asleep).

He had a friend, a somewhat younger woman, who came in to read to him. He was terribly pleased about this and talked about it – and her – quite frequently in our regular phone calls.

I should have seen it coming. When a man starts mentioning a woman (or vice versa) quite often, it tends to mean that something more than friendship is involved. But it just didn’t occur to me.

My daughter suggested that it was a possibility and I thought, no, that is unlikely. Not because the thought upset me, but they just seemed too old.

I went to visit around the time of his 90^th birthday, when we were holding a party for him. Soon after I arrived, he sat down and clearly wanted to communicate something to me.

He had never sought very intimate discussions, but this time was different. He mentioned the name of the woman, who I had not yet met, and said he wanted me to know that they had become ‘an item’. I remember thinking the word was odd.

He was very clear. This was not ‘simply kissing and cuddling’, it was the real thing. Indeed, he said his doctor thought it was terrific for his health. There was no mention of love, but that did not seem important. The key thing was that he was happy. And he was. He was then 90 and she was 83.

I was surprised, but also delighted. Whatever my views about fidelity in marriage, they do not extend to the time when one partner is effectively no longer there. I made this very clear and could see him visibly relax.

He had wanted me to know but had been frightened of my reaction. He said his worst fear was that some other resident would tell my mother, but it did not look like that had happened. He still continued to visit her as before.

My father and his lady friend never moved in together, although perhaps they stayed in each other’s apartments when I was not there. I did not press for such details.

She continued to be a regular presence in his life until he died. Indeed, the night he died, she went to the hospital and sat with his body for a long time.

When do people stop having sex?

I don’t know when – and if – people stop having sex. I suspect there is a lot of it about. Certainly, in the retirement community, it was common for couples to spring up quite quickly after the death of a partner.

But I do know about my father. And when I tell this story, I have never heard a reaction other than “what a wonderful story” or “so, there’s hope then”. I’m sure he would be delighted for you to know.

A version of this article can be found in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on growing older (see getbook.at/Stands-on-Head)

It was first published on SixtyandMe.com

We all have watershed moments in the course of our lives. Days when, from then on, things become notably different. The day you left home, the day you got married (or moved in together), the day you had your first child – all days signifying something important, and probably good, was happening in your life.

Most of us have also experienced watershed moments that signified a loss. The day a relationship finally came to an end. The move to a new and less desirable house. The death of a friend or – more so – a spouse.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the genesis of the word ‘watershed’. It seems that it was originally a geographical term for a place where water coming off a mountain divided into two separate rivers, in other words, a turning point.

And that is exactly what it feels like, when your life is either enhanced or diminished by some change.

A grandson in our lives

My husband and I have been very close to one of our two grandsons by the accident of circumstances. His mother was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer when he was eight months old, her husband (my son) was trying to complete a Ph.D., and they needed a lot of help – and fast. (She eventually recovered, I am happy to say, and is now cancer-free.)

We cobbled together a number of people to look after the baby, including the other grandmother who came from the US for the purpose, two outsiders and myself. And, somehow, we dealt with his various needs for the next months and more.

My husband and I bought a baby bed, a highchair, a pile of nappies (diapers) and all the accoutrements of babyhood so that he could come to our house on short notice. Which he did perhaps once a week or so. Sometimes more.

As he grew into a toddler and small child, our house was constantly responding to his changing needs, but it was always ready for a visit. The baby clothes became children’s clothes. We always had his favourite food of the moment.

His presence was the norm

My son’s old room became the grandson’s room and even my son’s place at our dining room table became his place. His little slippers were always in our front hall.

He felt completely at home in our house.

And then when he was six, his parents decided that the best primary school for his needs was one that was a ten-minute walk from our house (and 45 minutes by bus from their flat). To make their lives easier, we agreed that he could stay over with us on one night a week (and sometimes more). And we looked after him after school on other days, as needed.

To make a long story short, this child has been part of our day-to-day lives for 11 years. Some of this time was hard work – getting him up for school on days when I dearly wanted to lie in bed, going up the hill to collect him on cold and rainy days, seeing to his needs when I had other more pressing projects and so forth.

But taken as a whole, it has been both fun and deeply fulfilling. He is a very loving child, lively and interesting to talk to and full of opinions.

He has filled our house with his enthusiasms. He has kept us on our toes. And in some strange way, he has kept us young. Grandchildren do.

Our watershed moment

And suddenly, it is coming to an end. Several weeks ago, he finished at the nearby primary school. More drastically, the parents are going to live abroad for a year (with him) for an academic secondment. They leave shortly.

This lively grandson will no longer be coming to our house every week. Indeed, he won’t be coming at all for a year. His slippers are no longer in our front hall.

This is sadness enough.

But I realised that when they return, life will not go back to the old arrangements. The by-then adolescent will go to a local secondary school, where he will undoubtedly get caught up with friends, after-school activities and homework – all in his local area.

He will come to see us from time to time, of course, but he will no longer have that easy relationship that comes from seeing each other several times a week. We may feel close – I certainly hope that we do – but it won’t be in the same quotidian way.

I must quickly add that this is all right and good for him. Living abroad will be a terrific experience. He needs to grow up and find his own way. It was bound to happen.

But it is definitely a watershed moment for us. I watched him being driven home from our house for the last time in a while, smiling in the back seat of the car.

There was more than a slight lump in my throat.

This article was first published by Sixtyandme.com (see https://sixtyandme.com/watershed-moments/)

A lot of people, I find, have a close friend who does not make sense. Someone who just doesn’t ‘fit’ with other aspects of their life, and no one from outside can quite understand why they are friends at all.

Such friendships can be especially meaningful and sometimes surprising. Often, these are started at school, where the personalities of those involved were unformed and their subsequent life trajectories very different.

My young friend

My friend of this type was a young man with not long to live. I met him through work when I was close to 50 and he was just under 30. He was German, I was American, both living in London, although we first met at a conference in Belgium.

More significantly, he was a gay man, and I was a married woman with two children. He had grown up poor in a mining town in Germany and had taken up nursing when he left school at 16 because the only real alternative was becoming a miner. I came from a professional family in New York and had three degrees.

And he had been living with AIDS for five years, whereas I knew nothing about the disease. He was, indeed, highly active in the HIV/AIDS community, seen as something of a leader amongst them. I liked to keep to myself and never led anybody anywhere.

What did we see in each other?

I saw a very bright, sensitive but troubled man, who liked to reflect on deeper issues. I guess he saw some of the same qualities in me, although I never asked him. We certainly had similar temperaments, mixing reflectiveness with a sense of humour.

He also liked to challenge himself and those around him – and I found that a very inspiring (and somehow intimate) quality.

I also learned that his mother had died when he was 18 months old, and he claimed he had been looking for her (in some unspecified way) all his life. He was friends with a number of older women, of whom I was one. None of us knew each other.

Doing things together

We used to meet fairly often, mostly for lunch, although he did come to my house on several occasions.

At one lunch, we first planned what was to become a joint book based on interviews with people with AIDS and HIV, taking place at an international conference he was organising.

As is the case with Covid-19 today, the world was awash with statistics regarding the numbers diagnosed, but I was unaware of many personal stories. I knew that these can have a bigger impact on people than statistics. This strengthened our friendship and proved an important milestone for me in creating books based around interviews.

A special lunch

And there was a particularly poignant lunch. Towards the end of his life, he was in and out of hospital with various ailments and I would visit him there. On one occasion, he said, I thought jokingly, “Let’s have lunch next week.” I said sure, with a smile. But he meant it. And told me so.

The following week, I turned up at the hospital, finding him very frail and attached to a drip, but in his street clothes. It did not seem remotely feasible to take him outside, but he said he had cleared the venture with the staff.

We chatted for a bit and then, being a trained nurse, he unplugged himself from the drip and said, grinning, “Let’s go.”

It was a beautiful October day, sunny and crisp. There was a good restaurant nearby, and we headed toward it very slowly.

He was incredibly exuberant about the beauty of the day, conveying to me that feeling for ordinary life that can only come to someone long confined to a hospital bed. Some people stared – he was covered in Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions – but he carried on with dignity.

We ordered lunch and talked about all sorts of things of no great importance. I remember him exclaiming at the presentation of the food – and eating much of it, although his hunger was necessarily limited. I simply marvelled that we were there at all.

And when we had finished, we walked slowly, and somewhat sadly, back to the hospital, where he climbed onto his bed and re-attached his drip.

His death

He died about two months later. I sat with him for a long time on the day he died, although I went home and was replaced by another female friend by the time he died.

A few months later, yet another older female friend and I scattered his ashes in the sea outside of Brighton, as had been his wish. We watched the carnations she had bought float slowly away, went for a brief tea and headed home full of unspoken thoughts.

I will never forget either day.

As winter slowly turns into spring, most people turn their thoughts to warmer weather, flowers in the park and, probably, the birds and the bees. These are all good things to welcome, in my view.

But what I really like in the late spring, right up to the summer solstice (21 June) and beyond, are the long light evenings. Taking a walk when it is officially night-time – 9 p.m., say, but it feels like a slightly odd daytime – is very special. Even better when it is a warm evening.

There is something very soft and peaceful about such an evening. I find it very calming. And it feels like a bonus in your day, a little ‘extra time’ that is not usually available.

Winter nights

Let us go back a step. The opposite of a summer light evening is the winter period around the solstice (21 December) when the nights are long and intrude heavily into the day.

Some people love the winter evenings ‘drawing in’, but not me. I am very, very uncomfortable at this time of year – from mid-November to late January or so in London, where I live.

It can become dark well before 4 o’clock in the afternoon – indeed, at the exact point of the winter solstice, the sun goes down before then and dusk comes even earlier.

Although the streetlights come on, I find it hard to see where I am. Often, the air is murky, which makes it worse. Yet this is a time when we need to be out and about doing things.

I feel disoriented and uneasy. I invariably arrive home in a bad mood.

And I worry especially for those older children who are making their way home in the dark. Many are wearing dark coats and trousers and they are certainly not very visible to drivers when crossing the street at this time.

Summer nights

But let us come back to the late spring and summer, when I can see clearly and have no worries for the safety of children.

The precise length of the day on the summer solstice differs according to where you live, of course. In England (which is further north than many people think), the days can be very long.

In London, my research tells me, the sun rises at roughly 4.40 a.m. and sets at roughly 9.20 p.m. at the height of the solstice, but of course, it can remain light for much longer. Even at 10.00 p.m., the sky is not completely dark.

In New York, to give one comparison, the sun rises almost an hour later and sets nearly an hour earlier. This gives New Yorkers a long day as well, but not as long.

But the real point here is that it is lovely for all of us. If the day has been hot, you can go for a walk in the gentle air of the evening. Or you can sit in the garden with friends. Or the park.

The atmosphere is completely different from that of the day. It is evening but not evening. I find it magical.

Light mornings

Those readers who were watching carefully – or who, like me, don’t sleep well through the night – may note that another effect of the summer solstice is a lot of very early light.

In London, you can wake up to sunshine well before 5 o’clock. This can be a problem if you need darkness to sleep.

But for me, it is a small price to pay for the long languorous evenings. I consider that to be our prize for putting up with the winter darkness.

Sun standing still

The word solstice means the sun standing still in Latin. It seems like a small pause before the change of the sun’s seasonal movement.

That makes sense to me. And it is a time when we can all stand still and ponder.

By the time you are in your mid-70s and there has been no major health crisis, you know you have been lucky. If you have a spouse (or partner) and ‘you’ means both of you, you know you have been doubly lucky.

Now aged 79 and my husband aged 80, I have been saying to friends for a few years that we can reasonably expect a metaphorical block of concrete to fall on our heads at any time. No certainty of when or where, but it is definitely getting more possible.

Cancer? Heart attack? A nasty fall? Or, worse, some form of dementia?

Our own form of bad luck

And then that block did fall.

A few weeks ago, on Easter Friday evening, we were chatting about nothing in particular when my husband said that his eyes were blurry. It had just happened, there were no other symptoms, but it didn’t feel right.

Phone calls to a medical helpline and to an optometrist friend both elicited the suggestion he should get to an eye doctor. Both suggested a particular eye hospital, but neither hinted of any emergency.

The following day, Easter Saturday, not much was open. Even in the great metropolis that is London. Not our own GP surgery. Not the recommended eye hospital. The local optician had no appointments, but there was no eye doctor there in any case.

In brief, we went early to the best-known eye hospital in London, where a perceptive doctor feared it might be a stroke. To my eternal gratitude, with persistence, he obtained a referral to an excellent stroke unit in a convenient hospital.

We learned then that my husband had had a haemorrhagic stroke, resulting in an eye condition called a homonymous hemianopia (hemianopsia in the US). Difficult to spell h’s seemed to be part of the condition.

He stayed in the hospital for two nights (it should have been more, but he managed to talk himself home on the grounds that he would recover quicker with good sleep and good food – and perhaps they needed the bed).

Aftercare

The aftercare from the National Health Service (NHS) was brilliant. The day after my husband arrived home, an occupational therapist visited him at home to assess his needs and provide advice.

The stroke doctor phoned twice within the first two weeks, a senior stroke nurse phoned once to provide a helpline number and the senior doctor from the eye hospital also phoned to say they would be in touch when his eyes had settled down.

As for the patient, he was left very tired and with no disability except to his eyes. Indeed, after a few days, it was clear that he could read a newspaper slowly, go for walks and do most things. He could watch television, but with occasional difficulty (for instance, at times he couldn’t see the football in a televised match, depending on the camera angle).

But he is an avid reader, and it is likely he will be unable to read books because the slow reading means he cannot absorb the rhythm and meaning of such prose. Yes, there are audio books, but they are not the same at all.

Reaction to misfortune

But all of the above is a preamble to what I most wanted to write about, namely our reaction to the situation, particularly my own. You never know until it happens.

OK, a block of concrete had fallen. Yes, this was likely to change the texture of my husband’s life and therefore my own. It could, indeed, shorten his life span. We were told his eyesight might improve, but it was not likely to.

Many people become frustrated and angry in this kind of situation and I was, indeed, warned that he might undergo a personality change. That was the most terrifying suggestion of the whole experience.

But he is a calm and patient man and has never expressed any frustration at all. “It is what it is,” he says, “I will learn to deal with it.” He has a wicked sense of humour and it has not disappeared, thank goodness.

I went into a period of suspended emotion – not cross, not relieved, just holding in there. Part of me certainly wanted to fall apart. To rant that this had happened and was in some way unfair. Only I knew it wasn’t ‘unfair’ because fairness has nothing to do with these events.

And my strongest reaction was that he – and therefore I – had been lucky. He could have been permanently disabled. He could have lost his speech. He could have died. But all he had was a loss of some sight.

He had got off lightly, dodged the bullet, take your metaphor of choice.

At some point, roughly two weeks after the event, I did break down and have a short but powerful weep following an exploration of whether this shortened his expected life span. A terrifying chasm opened up just briefly – enough to peer over the edge – and then closed again.

I think the psyche knows exactly how much pain you can take ­­– and when – and doles it out appropriately. I went back to a sense of calm.

The man down the road

I think it is quite a common reaction to disasters of whatever kind to decide that you have essentially been lucky, that there is someone worse off than you.

Years ago, my husband’s late aunt, then widowed and in her late 70s, was flooded out of her much-loved bungalow by a major flood in North Wales.

Because of sanitation issues, she was required to live in a caravan next to her house for months while the authorities slowly cleaned up the numerous houses similarly affected. It was cramped, there were limited cooking and washing facilities and was clearly not the way she wanted to live.

Did she complain?

No, she told us she felt sorry for the man down the road, who was in the same situation but with a heart condition. “It must be really hard for him,” she noted.

I thought then – and I still think now – that there is always ‘a man down the road’. Someone worse off. Makes us appreciate what we have.

The future

We will continue to wait to see if there is improvement. We will wait to see what resources are available for the condition.

And, in the meantime, that block of concrete can still come – cancer, heart attack, a nasty fall, or, worse, some form of dementia.

You just never know.

A version of this article has been published in my book, The Granny Who Stands on her Head: Reflections on Growing Older

When you were younger but already adult, your parents most likely helped you in every way they could. Not everyone has such help, but a huge number of us do. And perhaps your grandparents did the same.

Maybe it was financial help. They gave you a down payment for a mortgage or helped with all those extras, like music lessons and school trips. Or college expenses for older children.

Or perhaps they offered a lot of useful advice about coping with different aspects of life. We all need that from time to time.

Or maybe they offered help looking after your children when you were at work, either on a regular basis or on occasion. Grandparents have always done a lot of such childcare.

They gave what they could – their financial resources their wisdom, their time.

Now you find yourself helping your children or grandchildren in much the same way.

What is going on?

Serial reciprocity

Years ago, I carried out research on the nature of patient support groups, then often called ‘self-help’ groups. These are sometimes very small local groups of people with a common condition, such as breast cancer or being widowed young.

Or they might be branches of much larger national organisations, such as for people with disabled children or people suffering from arthritis.

I carried out a survey of members of some groups about how much people participated in their activities and why. I also visited a lot of groups and met their committee members. Most of all, I was interested in what people gained from them and what made the groups work.

It seemed to me that members of such support groups were essentially involved in a form of reciprocity, but not of the normal kind. When you ask a neighbour if you can borrow a cup of sugar, she may well have already borrowed some milk from you on an earlier occasion. This is direct reciprocation – you helped her and she now helps you.

But when you, as a long-standing member of a support group, give a new member advice about how to cope with a problem, it is unlikely that she has already helped you. She is new and bewildered and in need of help.

But another member of that group may well have helped you on an earlier occasion, when you were equally in need. You are grateful and want to give back to others in response.

What is going on here is what I called ‘serial reciprocity’. You give back to a new person because you have already been helped. Your motivation is to reciprocate or give back to others in thanks for the help you received.

Neither of you may think about it in this way, but it is often an underlying motivation.

It can go on and on, as members come and go. The eagerness to reciprocate goes on in a serial fashion. Help begets help.

Families

And this is exactly what goes on in families. The help you received from an earlier generation makes you want to give help back to the next generation.

Again, this may be financial help (‘the bank of mum and dad’) to help with all sorts of expenses of young couples. Or it may be advice, based on your experience. Or it may be your time, collecting grandchildren from school and the like.

And your children will do the same for their children and grandchildren.

Love

Of course, you can also say it is ‘love’ that makes you want to help your adult children and nothing to do with reciprocity. And that may be so.

But I think people are programmed to try to pay back for help received.

And who better to pay ‘back’ than members of your own family.

It is part of the circle of life.