On an extraordinarily hot Independence Day
weekend, I visited my elderly mother-in-law in her quiet suburban community on
the edge of Boston, Massachusetts. She lives alone and mostly independently.
Part of my wife's and my weekend ritual is visiting and running
errands with her.
As we walked down her driveway, we saw a black
car drive slowly down the quiet, empty street. A man stuck his head out the
window and asked whether I had seen an older Asian man dressed in dark clothing
walking through the neighborhood. An Alzheimer’s patient, he had wandered off
from home in the 90-plus degree heat.
After the man drove away, my phone buzzed with
a Silver Alert, giving me the same information again. I looked up and down the
street and couldn’t spot any wandering older man. I also couldn’t see any
neighbors who could intercept any such older man, should he happen to come
wandering by. If the neighbors were outside, they were in their backyards with
their families and dogs and grills, silo’d off from the world. I was struck by
the paradox of this--thousands of people simultaneously made aware of a person
in danger, but with nobody observably rushing out to help.
To me, this Alzheimer’s victim is a microcosm
of a big and longstanding question: As our society ages, how do we age
independently while remaining safe, engaged, and part of the larger community?
Six in ten adults with dementia will wander, risking injury and death from
accidents or from environmental factors, e.g., extreme heat or cold. Consider
these other tragedies that disproportionately affected older adults:
·
Nearly half of those
killed by Hurricane Katrina in 2007 were over the age of 74 and an estimated
70% of those that died in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of 2017 Hurricane Maria
were over 70 years old.
·
Heat waves are the
cause of death and countless hospitalizations of elderly people living in their
homes. The infamous 2003 heat wave in France killed over 15,000 people, 90
percent of whom were over the age of 65
The main prevention for these dangers is social:
someone to check up on you and make sure you’re safe. Successful aging is less
about eating right, daily exercise, or saving for retirement than having a
robust circle of family and friends.
Family has historically been the true
retirement social security in older age. But families are
becoming smaller. As I observe in an earlier article, the sinking birthrate has provided fewer children and
grandchildren to provide care. Being older, especially if you are a woman,
often means living solo. Friends are also in short supply in our
retirement years; our social circles tend to decline with age.
Remaining independent at home is perhaps the
number one priority articulated by older adults. Just note the extreme
and recent story of a 92-year-old woman who killed her
72-year-old son on learning of his plans to place her in assisted living. But
can we really live independently without the helping hands of other people?
Technology has been touted as a way to ensure
independence as well as safety and even engagement as we age. Facebook
ostensibly provides the framework for a vast digital community. Smaller social
media platforms like Nextdoor could take the place of neighborhood meetings. AI
applications from smart speakers to humanoid robots are now being developed
and, in some cases, have moved from the laboratory into people’s living rooms,
to provide both a watchful eye and social companion for older adults living
alone. Personal emergency response systems (social alarms for my European
friends) have been available for decades to alert first responders that someone
has had an accident. Even for those at high risk, such as our wandering man
with Alzheimer’s, there are countless high tech applications, some of them I
worked on and championed myself, to detect and track a wanderer.
But high tech remains a distant second to high
(human) touch. Despite the well-meaning intent and engineering precision
integrated into monitoring devices and services, they still rely on someone to
respond. Social media sites do not readily facilitate a warm smile over a cup
of coffee. Smart houses do not provide hugs or tell jokes to someone having a
less than so-so day. As my MIT colleague Sherry Terkle has noted in her
research, technology provides many benefits, but it has also enabled us to be alone together. That said, high tech is
better than no touch when a human touch is not available.
That brings me back to Independence Day, the
older man with Alzheimer’s, and the quiet suburban street during the July 4th
holiday week. Independence Day is more than the celebration of the birth of a
nation. It is about a community of people who demanded
individual rights and independence from a distant leviathan that neither understood
the context nor the culture that had emerged thousands of miles away.
Similarly, it is perhaps with the greatest of
semantic irony that we need the support of others (a community) to
retire, live and age independently. Older adults are not a separate class. They
are a group that we all ultimately aspire to be a part of (The alternative to
not aging is not pretty). With that in mind we should endeavor to help everyone
live independently with small and often simple acts. Here are
just a few:
·
Smile and say hello to
the person down the hall or down the street
·
Shovel a walk after a
snow storm
·
Check in on neighbors
·
Make note of
newspapers or mail piling up after a day
·
Offer a morning coffee
or a seat at the backyard BBQ
In an era where people are told that if
they see something, say something, it is also a time to make an
effort to see someone, do something.
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