Old Age homes were earlier looked upon as abode for old men and women who had no one to look after them. But the scenario is changing fast. Today Old Age homes are no longer just for the needy but also for people who want company and want to spend their life amongst people of their own age. Old Age Homes in India are too changing with times. Today along with the traditional old homes, we have retirement homes which are societies for the elderly. Here they can do whatever they desire in the company of their peers.
Retirement Homes are a new way of life that make sure that the person gets the ambiance and atmosphere he is looking for. Everything right from health, food, lodging and entertainment is taken care of.
Showing posts with label Old age Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old age Love. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Love is not lost in old age
Katherine and Marvin Kehler have been married for over 46 years now, living & sleeping beneath the same roof, sharing meals together, working, playing, praying and traveling during this stretch of time.
Katherine's husband is often called away on travel, perhaps a good thirty percent of each year.
During these long, lonely hours away from home, Marvin makes a point to call her often, in the evenings, when their bed is cold, his voice curving her lips into a smile.
Katherine is still convinced, 46 years into their marriage, that he has the most beautiful smile in the whole world. She loves his calm, gentle voice and his warm, friendly eyes.
He always assures her of his love, frequently saying the words most men find difficult to say, "I love you" and "You're beautiful", showering her with kisses and hugs, wrapping her in adoring affection.
In the evenings, because he knows she likes to take baths, she will come home to find a hot fragrant bath, the room cozy and warm.
Often he will bring her flowers, "Just because" and still makes a point to open doors for her.
When they're together in a group meeting, he warms her heart with a flirty wink. It makes her feel young, like a teenager again.
Their love thrives and grows as they work at pleasing each other, rather than selfishly insisting only having their own needs met.
Katherine shows her love for her husband by cooking his favorite meals. He basks in her thoughtfulness, especially after being on the road and eating restaurant food most of the time.
She cleans and presses his shirt and pants so that he's ready to meet anyone at a moment's notice.
She takes care of the housekeeping, so that when he's home he can just relax after being on the road for hours on end.
She makes a point to let him know what she thinks of him, murmuring in his ear as she gives him a hug, that he's handsome and sharp.
On slow, quiet evenings together as they watch TV, Katherine rests her head in his lap; completely comfortable with the wonderful husband God had given her.
There are times of laughter as well. Times when Marvin is stretched out on the sofa and she just can't resist reaching out to tickle his feet in passing.
They make sure to show affection in public as well, a nurturing touch or gentle squeeze on the arm that communicates, " I love you", without either of them saying a word.
They make a point to include God in their marriage, discussing together over breakfast, what they had been given in Scripture for the day and taking a moment, before giving in to the rat race of the world, to share in prayer.
They realize that romance doesn't start in the bedroom but in the every day exchange of their lives from the way they greet one another in the morning to how they interact and treat each other throughout the day. They have found that in being affectionate and saying kind words that build each other up, it is only natural that when they retire for the evening, that they desire to cuddle.
Perhaps in trying these tips, they've put to the task and found useful, we too can use this recipe to strengthen our marriages and to grow old and gray with our spouses.
Article by-Jorene Haight
Katherine's husband is often called away on travel, perhaps a good thirty percent of each year.
During these long, lonely hours away from home, Marvin makes a point to call her often, in the evenings, when their bed is cold, his voice curving her lips into a smile.
Katherine is still convinced, 46 years into their marriage, that he has the most beautiful smile in the whole world. She loves his calm, gentle voice and his warm, friendly eyes.
He always assures her of his love, frequently saying the words most men find difficult to say, "I love you" and "You're beautiful", showering her with kisses and hugs, wrapping her in adoring affection.
In the evenings, because he knows she likes to take baths, she will come home to find a hot fragrant bath, the room cozy and warm.
Often he will bring her flowers, "Just because" and still makes a point to open doors for her.
When they're together in a group meeting, he warms her heart with a flirty wink. It makes her feel young, like a teenager again.
Their love thrives and grows as they work at pleasing each other, rather than selfishly insisting only having their own needs met.
Katherine shows her love for her husband by cooking his favorite meals. He basks in her thoughtfulness, especially after being on the road and eating restaurant food most of the time.
She cleans and presses his shirt and pants so that he's ready to meet anyone at a moment's notice.
She takes care of the housekeeping, so that when he's home he can just relax after being on the road for hours on end.
She makes a point to let him know what she thinks of him, murmuring in his ear as she gives him a hug, that he's handsome and sharp.
On slow, quiet evenings together as they watch TV, Katherine rests her head in his lap; completely comfortable with the wonderful husband God had given her.
There are times of laughter as well. Times when Marvin is stretched out on the sofa and she just can't resist reaching out to tickle his feet in passing.
They make sure to show affection in public as well, a nurturing touch or gentle squeeze on the arm that communicates, " I love you", without either of them saying a word.
They make a point to include God in their marriage, discussing together over breakfast, what they had been given in Scripture for the day and taking a moment, before giving in to the rat race of the world, to share in prayer.
They realize that romance doesn't start in the bedroom but in the every day exchange of their lives from the way they greet one another in the morning to how they interact and treat each other throughout the day. They have found that in being affectionate and saying kind words that build each other up, it is only natural that when they retire for the evening, that they desire to cuddle.
Perhaps in trying these tips, they've put to the task and found useful, we too can use this recipe to strengthen our marriages and to grow old and gray with our spouses.
Article by-Jorene Haight
Love in an Oldage Home
IN THE PALOMAR ARMS, By Hilma Wolitzer. 307 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $14.95.
THE unmistakable odor of fleshly mortality wafts through the pages of Hilma Wolitzer's fourth novel, as it wafts through the rooms and corridors of the Palomar Arms Senior Home in Ventura, Calif., where the novel's 24-year-old heroine, Daphne Moss, works as a kitchen aide. The home is a friendly enough place, though it bills itself as a ''convalescent and rehabilitation facility'' and everyone knows that it is a rare patient indeed who ever convalesces or gets rehabilitated. ''Their major common complaint is extreme and irrevocable old age, and most of them are kept hostage until they die,'' as Daphne grimly observes.
One scarcely needs to be told that it is a depressing place and that Daphne's tenure there will be brief. She tries to think of the elderly patients as an ''unfortunate club of aliens'' she will never be asked to join. Her strategy is to move in their midst ''breathing out more often than she breathes in'' and dousing herself liberally with perfume to overcome the ''surprisingly interchangeable'' odors of urine and food.
She is generally a sunny young woman, not unlike the 26-year-old heroine of a previous novel, ''Hearts,'' who finds herself a widow with a stepchild after a six-week marriage and must learn to adapt - sometimes with comic results - to her new station in life. In this case Daphne must learn to adjust to life without the consolations and illusions of love, at least for a while.
When we first meet her, she is very much involved with a married man named Kenny; she imagines that when the time is ''right,'' he will simply leave his wife and children and that ''the best years of her infinite and promising life'' will begin. There will be some trouble, of course, but no ''unwarranted violence.'' Daphne is so simple she has failed an elementary test at the telephone company. (She had been trying for a position in Directory Assistance.) And to set the mood for her trysts with Kenny, she has painted her bedroom ceiling midnight blue and pasted luminescent paper stars on it. By the novel's end she is ostensibly wiser - she will paint the ceiling over in rosy pink.
The sadly predictable love affair of Daphne and Kenny is interlarded with chapters from the point of view of two of the Palomar Home's more interesting residents: a 97-year-old woman named Nora McBride who has fibbed about her age and will be grandly feted on her ''100th'' birthday (everyone at the home is determined that Nora will live for her birthday, since media attention is assured and even a telegram from the President) and an elderly sufferer from Parkinson's disease named Joseph Axel, who wants to die. In one of the novel's most poignant scenes, Axel's distraught daughter pleads with Daphne to befriend her father, who is a special person, self-taught, interested in the arts, history and music. ''Daphne was eager to get away before she heard too much, before the woman revealed episodes of her childhood, like home movies, and visions of the manly father who had once pointed out the Big Dipper in a summer sky, and who had seemed tall and powerful as a building against the sky.''
At the novel's end Daphne is brought to a convincing, if not terribly profound, realization: ''Suddenly, in her awful wakefulness, (she) knew what the older people meant. It was that the old-fashioned idea of abiding love - what her generation called commitment - was endangered by the ease of casual sex. The faithful mind and the wanton body were only mortal enemies confined to the same prison.'' Though this would seem to be a modest insight, it does represent a step forward for Daphne, who is last seen ''liberated'' from her adolescent love for Kenny and transferring her credits from mediocre Ventura College to the intellectual heights of San Francisco State University..
''IN THE PALOMAR ARMS'' is a gentle, unpretentious novel populated by well-meaning people who cause one another harm out of ignorance rather than cruelty. The novel's primary weakness, in fact, is a certain blandness of characterization: Daphne and Kenny and Axel and Nora all sound exactly alike, musing to themselves in precisely the same idioms and speech rhythms. Kenny, who should be a strong, pivotal character, is disappointingly wispy, and it is difficult for the reader to take his and Daphne's ''love'' seriously. He is too easily manipulated by his wife's emotional blackmail and pressured into contin of those large stores that carries everything, open and bustling with business. ... When Kenny sees her, he'll be shocked by how different she looks. ... See, I'm already someone else. Why are you telling me this story?''
articlesource:the newyork times
THE unmistakable odor of fleshly mortality wafts through the pages of Hilma Wolitzer's fourth novel, as it wafts through the rooms and corridors of the Palomar Arms Senior Home in Ventura, Calif., where the novel's 24-year-old heroine, Daphne Moss, works as a kitchen aide. The home is a friendly enough place, though it bills itself as a ''convalescent and rehabilitation facility'' and everyone knows that it is a rare patient indeed who ever convalesces or gets rehabilitated. ''Their major common complaint is extreme and irrevocable old age, and most of them are kept hostage until they die,'' as Daphne grimly observes.
One scarcely needs to be told that it is a depressing place and that Daphne's tenure there will be brief. She tries to think of the elderly patients as an ''unfortunate club of aliens'' she will never be asked to join. Her strategy is to move in their midst ''breathing out more often than she breathes in'' and dousing herself liberally with perfume to overcome the ''surprisingly interchangeable'' odors of urine and food.
She is generally a sunny young woman, not unlike the 26-year-old heroine of a previous novel, ''Hearts,'' who finds herself a widow with a stepchild after a six-week marriage and must learn to adapt - sometimes with comic results - to her new station in life. In this case Daphne must learn to adjust to life without the consolations and illusions of love, at least for a while.
When we first meet her, she is very much involved with a married man named Kenny; she imagines that when the time is ''right,'' he will simply leave his wife and children and that ''the best years of her infinite and promising life'' will begin. There will be some trouble, of course, but no ''unwarranted violence.'' Daphne is so simple she has failed an elementary test at the telephone company. (She had been trying for a position in Directory Assistance.) And to set the mood for her trysts with Kenny, she has painted her bedroom ceiling midnight blue and pasted luminescent paper stars on it. By the novel's end she is ostensibly wiser - she will paint the ceiling over in rosy pink.
The sadly predictable love affair of Daphne and Kenny is interlarded with chapters from the point of view of two of the Palomar Home's more interesting residents: a 97-year-old woman named Nora McBride who has fibbed about her age and will be grandly feted on her ''100th'' birthday (everyone at the home is determined that Nora will live for her birthday, since media attention is assured and even a telegram from the President) and an elderly sufferer from Parkinson's disease named Joseph Axel, who wants to die. In one of the novel's most poignant scenes, Axel's distraught daughter pleads with Daphne to befriend her father, who is a special person, self-taught, interested in the arts, history and music. ''Daphne was eager to get away before she heard too much, before the woman revealed episodes of her childhood, like home movies, and visions of the manly father who had once pointed out the Big Dipper in a summer sky, and who had seemed tall and powerful as a building against the sky.''
At the novel's end Daphne is brought to a convincing, if not terribly profound, realization: ''Suddenly, in her awful wakefulness, (she) knew what the older people meant. It was that the old-fashioned idea of abiding love - what her generation called commitment - was endangered by the ease of casual sex. The faithful mind and the wanton body were only mortal enemies confined to the same prison.'' Though this would seem to be a modest insight, it does represent a step forward for Daphne, who is last seen ''liberated'' from her adolescent love for Kenny and transferring her credits from mediocre Ventura College to the intellectual heights of San Francisco State University..
''IN THE PALOMAR ARMS'' is a gentle, unpretentious novel populated by well-meaning people who cause one another harm out of ignorance rather than cruelty. The novel's primary weakness, in fact, is a certain blandness of characterization: Daphne and Kenny and Axel and Nora all sound exactly alike, musing to themselves in precisely the same idioms and speech rhythms. Kenny, who should be a strong, pivotal character, is disappointingly wispy, and it is difficult for the reader to take his and Daphne's ''love'' seriously. He is too easily manipulated by his wife's emotional blackmail and pressured into contin of those large stores that carries everything, open and bustling with business. ... When Kenny sees her, he'll be shocked by how different she looks. ... See, I'm already someone else. Why are you telling me this story?''
articlesource:the newyork times
Monday, December 1, 2008
No 'Old Age' Limit to Love
On Valentine's Day, it's quite common for couples to exchange flowers, candy, kisses or warm embraces on city streets. The day, after all, symbolizes love.
But is there an age limit to romantic love?
The mass media would lead us to believe that this is the case, given that young couples are often the focal point of most marketing campaigns and TV series.
So what about older couples? Does love fade after a certain point?
According to Dr. Norm O'Rourke, the opposite may be true: love may help sustain people in their later years.
Dr. O'Rourke is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor with the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. In October 2005, he received both a CIHR New Investigator award and the CIHR Institute of Aging's Recognition Prize for Aging Research. His work is supported largely by funding from CIHR and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Dr. O'Rourke is currently investigating why a phenomenon he has labelled 'marital aggrandizement' can have significant physical and mental health benefits for older married people. According to Dr. O'Rourke, this is a state of mind where one holds an unrealistically inflated or exaggerated sense of how good the relationship has been; that the couple has experienced no problems in their many years of marriage.
In 1996, Dr. O'Rourke and his colleagues recognized this phenomenon while they studied depression among spouses of persons with dementia.
Despite caring for loved ones under stressful conditions, he discovered that certain caregivers appeared to be functioning with no difficulty at all. Often, these spouses had only positive things to say about their loved ones; and recalled only wonderful things about their married lives before their spouses became ill.
This prompted Dr. O'Rourke to ask crucial questions: "How is it possible for married people not to remember negative memories about their spouses and relationships? And is it possible that this tendency to idealize affects their physical and mental well-being?"
With the aid of a measurement scale that he and Dr. Philippe Cappeliez from the University of Ottawa developed in 2002, Dr. O'Rourke is able to identify those who look at their married lives in highly idealized ways. It appears that this tendency sustains people by buffering them from the negative effects of life's ups and downs.
In his research, Dr. O'Rourke has also discovered that this tendency to idealize is not necessarily contagious. In other words, it is not uncommon for one spouse to recall only fond memories of their married lives, while the other looks at the marriage from a more balanced perspective. And this isn't gender specific.
"Dr. O'Rourke's research on later life relationships will be an important contribution to the social psychology of health and aging, through its examination of the role of aggrandizement," notes Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Aging. "It will also have practical application in our understanding of complex relationship issues and dynamics as they relate to health in old age."
As part of his three-year CIHR-funded study, Dr. O'Rourke has taken this research into the lab in an attempt to better understand how couples in long-term marriages interact and resolve their disagreements. He is in the process of recruiting 125 couples, over the age of 49 who have been married at least 20 years.
The Process:
Dr. O'Rourke and his graduate students first find a common point of disagreement within couples (financial issues are most common). His lab has been set up to resemble a comfortable living room atmosphere in which couples are asked to discuss various ways they might resolve their issues.
Video recordings enable him to study facial expressions, body language in addition to what they say to each other. Dr. O'Rourke also obtains multiple cortisol samples to measure stress levels using saliva samples provided by the couples. If cortisol levels spike over the course of the discussion and remain high, then he knows that stress levels have increased significantly.
The Results:
So far, Dr. O'Rourke has noticed that among those where one or both partners idealize their married lives, they don't fight as much as they discuss.
"They have more constructive methods of approaching their problems. They talk about a disputed issue in a calm and rational manner and listen attentively to the other person's perspective," says Dr. O'Rourke.
It is assumed that within these couples, cortisol levels remain relatively low - and so does the stress.
This is an important finding, because high cortisol levels are significantly associated with illnesses such as heart disease.
This is just the beginning for Dr. O'Rourke and his team in their attempts to understand the phenomenon of marital aggrandizement. They intend to follow couples over time in order to see how their health may change and what factors predict these changes.
Dr. O'Rourke also hopes to identify how these factors help sustain the mental and physical health of older adults over time.
True love and health - that's something else to think about on Valentine's Day
But is there an age limit to romantic love?
The mass media would lead us to believe that this is the case, given that young couples are often the focal point of most marketing campaigns and TV series.
So what about older couples? Does love fade after a certain point?
According to Dr. Norm O'Rourke, the opposite may be true: love may help sustain people in their later years.
Dr. O'Rourke is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor with the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. In October 2005, he received both a CIHR New Investigator award and the CIHR Institute of Aging's Recognition Prize for Aging Research. His work is supported largely by funding from CIHR and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Dr. O'Rourke is currently investigating why a phenomenon he has labelled 'marital aggrandizement' can have significant physical and mental health benefits for older married people. According to Dr. O'Rourke, this is a state of mind where one holds an unrealistically inflated or exaggerated sense of how good the relationship has been; that the couple has experienced no problems in their many years of marriage.
In 1996, Dr. O'Rourke and his colleagues recognized this phenomenon while they studied depression among spouses of persons with dementia.
Despite caring for loved ones under stressful conditions, he discovered that certain caregivers appeared to be functioning with no difficulty at all. Often, these spouses had only positive things to say about their loved ones; and recalled only wonderful things about their married lives before their spouses became ill.
This prompted Dr. O'Rourke to ask crucial questions: "How is it possible for married people not to remember negative memories about their spouses and relationships? And is it possible that this tendency to idealize affects their physical and mental well-being?"
With the aid of a measurement scale that he and Dr. Philippe Cappeliez from the University of Ottawa developed in 2002, Dr. O'Rourke is able to identify those who look at their married lives in highly idealized ways. It appears that this tendency sustains people by buffering them from the negative effects of life's ups and downs.
In his research, Dr. O'Rourke has also discovered that this tendency to idealize is not necessarily contagious. In other words, it is not uncommon for one spouse to recall only fond memories of their married lives, while the other looks at the marriage from a more balanced perspective. And this isn't gender specific.
"Dr. O'Rourke's research on later life relationships will be an important contribution to the social psychology of health and aging, through its examination of the role of aggrandizement," notes Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Aging. "It will also have practical application in our understanding of complex relationship issues and dynamics as they relate to health in old age."
As part of his three-year CIHR-funded study, Dr. O'Rourke has taken this research into the lab in an attempt to better understand how couples in long-term marriages interact and resolve their disagreements. He is in the process of recruiting 125 couples, over the age of 49 who have been married at least 20 years.
The Process:
Dr. O'Rourke and his graduate students first find a common point of disagreement within couples (financial issues are most common). His lab has been set up to resemble a comfortable living room atmosphere in which couples are asked to discuss various ways they might resolve their issues.
Video recordings enable him to study facial expressions, body language in addition to what they say to each other. Dr. O'Rourke also obtains multiple cortisol samples to measure stress levels using saliva samples provided by the couples. If cortisol levels spike over the course of the discussion and remain high, then he knows that stress levels have increased significantly.
The Results:
So far, Dr. O'Rourke has noticed that among those where one or both partners idealize their married lives, they don't fight as much as they discuss.
"They have more constructive methods of approaching their problems. They talk about a disputed issue in a calm and rational manner and listen attentively to the other person's perspective," says Dr. O'Rourke.
It is assumed that within these couples, cortisol levels remain relatively low - and so does the stress.
This is an important finding, because high cortisol levels are significantly associated with illnesses such as heart disease.
This is just the beginning for Dr. O'Rourke and his team in their attempts to understand the phenomenon of marital aggrandizement. They intend to follow couples over time in order to see how their health may change and what factors predict these changes.
Dr. O'Rourke also hopes to identify how these factors help sustain the mental and physical health of older adults over time.
True love and health - that's something else to think about on Valentine's Day
Friday, November 28, 2008
Oldage and Lonelyness
Daily we read and hear so many heart-rending cases of murders of senior citizens, children sending their parents to old age homes, children misbehaving or ill-treating parents and throwing them out of their houses. Their progeny seem ashamed of their parents nowadays.
What is this happening? What is the fault of the parents? Is this their fault that they have become older now, or their fault is that they have wasted their entire life for their children by meeting their needs and expectations, giving their children everything they have ever wanted, from sending them to schools to helping them in being self-dependent? Or the fault of parents is that they have loved their children so much? And so good is the result, that senior citizens are getting out of it. Instead of receiving love of their children, daughter-in-law and grand-children, they are getting humiliation, negligence and disrespect. This is seriously very saddening and disappointing.
Did parents ever teach their children to forget their moral values, respect and love for them, when they become old? No, they have never taught this. Parents can never even expect this from their children. The feeling of being ignored by your loved ones kills from inside.
Recently, I came across an old lady, who lives in our neighborhood. The kind of life she is leading is inhuman. She is living just because she is not strong enough to commit suicide. She is living with the hope that one day she will get back the love she has been showering on her children till now. I was in tears, when I heard her story. She was crying and telling me what has happened with her. Her husband had left her; she was living with her only son. She gave everything she had to her son; property, house and ornaments to her daughter in law, hoping and believing that her children will take care of her in future.
But now she is in a state, which is really very disgusting and pathetic. She did not even got proper three meals a day, no good clothes to wear, and what she gets is humiliation and ignorance. After every two days, her daughter-in-law fights with her because that poor old lady never cleans the floor neatly or washes the clothes. She also sometimes get beaten up by her only son. Now her children are planning to send her to an old age home, where she'll be all alone.
This is the condition of senior citizens now days. Children have forgotten their moral values, culture and even love for their parents. They have become so busy in their lives that they do not have time to take care of their parents.
People, who do these things with their parents, are building up their future also. Children learn from parents and in future they will surely be facing same circumstances as of what they are doing to their parents. Because, whatever you do comes back to you one day.
What is this happening? What is the fault of the parents? Is this their fault that they have become older now, or their fault is that they have wasted their entire life for their children by meeting their needs and expectations, giving their children everything they have ever wanted, from sending them to schools to helping them in being self-dependent? Or the fault of parents is that they have loved their children so much? And so good is the result, that senior citizens are getting out of it. Instead of receiving love of their children, daughter-in-law and grand-children, they are getting humiliation, negligence and disrespect. This is seriously very saddening and disappointing.
Did parents ever teach their children to forget their moral values, respect and love for them, when they become old? No, they have never taught this. Parents can never even expect this from their children. The feeling of being ignored by your loved ones kills from inside.
Recently, I came across an old lady, who lives in our neighborhood. The kind of life she is leading is inhuman. She is living just because she is not strong enough to commit suicide. She is living with the hope that one day she will get back the love she has been showering on her children till now. I was in tears, when I heard her story. She was crying and telling me what has happened with her. Her husband had left her; she was living with her only son. She gave everything she had to her son; property, house and ornaments to her daughter in law, hoping and believing that her children will take care of her in future.
But now she is in a state, which is really very disgusting and pathetic. She did not even got proper three meals a day, no good clothes to wear, and what she gets is humiliation and ignorance. After every two days, her daughter-in-law fights with her because that poor old lady never cleans the floor neatly or washes the clothes. She also sometimes get beaten up by her only son. Now her children are planning to send her to an old age home, where she'll be all alone.
This is the condition of senior citizens now days. Children have forgotten their moral values, culture and even love for their parents. They have become so busy in their lives that they do not have time to take care of their parents.
People, who do these things with their parents, are building up their future also. Children learn from parents and in future they will surely be facing same circumstances as of what they are doing to their parents. Because, whatever you do comes back to you one day.
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