Finding a Third Act in Life

At 94, Stephen Richardson still competes in rowing and running.

“There are no second acts in American lives,” Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. That may have been true in Fitzgerald’s day, but now, in the 21^st century, as more and more baby boomers are transforming our expectations of old age, retired Americans are discovering third acts in their lives—life-altering experiences that happen after the age of, say, 65.

In October I wrote a blog post, “No, I don’t want to Die at 75!” in response to a widely discussed article in “The Atlantic” by a famous scientist named Ezekiel J. Emanuel.  He wrote that he wanted to die at 75 and that, after he turns 65, he plans to discontinue all his health care because the “manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive,” as it burdens our children with the “wrong kind of memories…We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”

I should mention here that Mr. Emanuel is a youngster of 57, and that I am about to turn 74, which makes me too old even to count as a Baby Boomer (people born between 1946 and 1964.) I wrote in my post, “I submit that my quality of life in my late sixties and early seventies is better than at any previous time in my life,” and I gave examples, ranging from returning to my first love—painting—to visiting a Hindu wedding in India, a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico, sea turtle beaches in Nicaragua, and, especially, discovering the ineffable joys of being a grandmother.

After that blog post was published, I began to hear of fellow senior citizens who had achieved truly remarkable third acts in their lives at an age when, according to Mr. Emanuel, they should have been buying burial plots.

Take Stephen Richardson, who, at 94, still competes in rowing. He began rowing when he was a student at Harvard in the mid-1940’s, but it wasn’t until he turned 50 that he started running marathons as well. He ran at least 28 marathons between the age of 53-68, including a first-place finish in his age group at the London Marathon, and recorded his best-ever mile time at the age of 60.  Now, six years short of his 100^th birthday, he still competes in rowing and running.

Three friends, Katherine Southworth,78, Jack Taylor, 80, and Marilyn Wentworth, 84, got together after retirement—when they were all in their seventies and living in RiverWoods  retirement center in New Hampshire--—to write and publish a book about World War II memories.  They collected 75 first-person narratives, including period photos, maps and a detailed index.  Before they ventured into publishing, Katherine was a director at a New York school, then an EMT for the North Hampton Fire Department, Jack earned a PhD in  physics at MIT in 1961, then served at the Army Signal Corps Laboratories doing research on detecting nuclear tests, and Marilyn, after working on Wall Street, entered graduate school at age fifty, earning a masters degree, then becoming a registered dietician and teaching college level nutrition.  All three became first-time authors after the age of 75.

The most unexpected third act I heard about belonged to Nancy Alcock, a native of Tasmania and a biochemist who worked for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute before her semi-retirement as one of the first women faculty members at the University of Texas Medical school.  An independent woman who had never married, the last thing Nancy expected when she quit work at 74 and moved into the RiverWoods community, was to become a first-time bride, but that’s what happened.

Dr. Henry Hood, a retired neurosurgeon who, by coincidence, had worked with Nancy at Sloan Kettering but never knew her there, had also moved into RiverWoods with his wife, who was in poor health.  After she passed away, Dr. Hood became a member of RiverWoods’ Resident Council and got to know his former colleague, Nancy, during council committee meetings.  When they were married in 2008 in the Cathedral of the Pines in Rindge, NH, Henry’s children and grandchildren were in attendance.  Later they flew to Tasmania for a similar celebration with Nancy’s family. Nancy and Henry are not a rarity—in fact, there have been six weddings at RiverWoods alone in the past four years.

RiverWoods is one of 1900 Continuing Care Retirement Communities in the United States, the majority of which are non-profit. A CCRC guarantees that their residents, who join when they are able to live independently, will have lifetime health care at both Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing levels, if and when they need it.

Because such communities provide amenities encouraging residents to discover new activities and creative outlets-- such as art studios, libraries, pools, fitness centers, gardens and access to nearby theaters, shops and sports-- it’s not surprising that many retired citizens have reinvented their lives, because they are encouraged to pursue passions they didn’t have time for earlier. In fact, it appears to me that the Baby Boomers, who basically invented their own style of being teenagers, then campus activists, then deeply involved parents, and environmentally responsible consumers, are now creating a new way of being old, boldly finding third acts in their lives instead of declining into Mr. Emanuel’s characterization of us as “feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”

 

No, I Don’t Want to Die at 75!

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I imagine by now you’ve heard about the kerfuffle over the article in the October  Atlantic by Ezekiel J. Emanuel titled “Why I Hope to Die at 75”.

Ezekiel Emanuel is a very distinguished scientist.  He is director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and heads the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.  He was a primary architect of Obamacare.  And he is 57 years old.

Needless to say, his 5,000-word piece evoked a lot of debate, although everyone agreed he makes some important and startling points.  They are his reasons for saying that he hopes to die at 75 and that after he turns 65, he plans to discontinue all his health care—no flu shots, colonoscopies, surgery, pacemakers or heart bypasses. No cancer treatments or antibiotics.  He quotes  Sir William Osler, who said in a classic turn-of-the-century medical textbook, “Pneumonia may well be called the friend of the aged,”  because it kills you quickly and relatively painlessly.

Emanuel cites, scornfully, what he calls the “American immortal”, who is “obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible.” He thinks this “manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive.”

He also includes a graph to show that creativity “peaks about 20 years into the career, at about age 40 or 45, and then enters a slow, age-related decline.”   He writes, “The fact is that by age 75, creativity, originality and productivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us.”

Furthermore, “A third of people 85 and older  [have] Alzheimer’s.”

Selfish people who insist on living beyond 75 are burdening their children with the “wrong kind of memories.”  [If we live too long] “We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”

Mr. Emanuel points out that more than half of us oldsters have functional limitations. (The test of whether you’re functioning properly is this: you can walk a quarter of a mile, climb 10 stairs, stand or sit for two hours; and stand up, bend, or kneel without using special equipment.)

He points out that his own father, now in his eighties, had a heart attack and bypass “just shy of his 77^th birthday” and has been slowing down ever since. “Today he can swim, read the newspaper, needle his kids on the phone and still live with my mother in their own house, But everything seems sluggish….no one would say he is living a vibrant life.”

Well, Mr Emanuel, I’m about to turn 74, and I want to tell you that I do not hope to die at 75.  I submit that my quality of life in my late sixties and early seventies is better than at any previous time in my life.  During high school I was miserable.  In college and grad school I was exhausted, overworked and sleep-deprived.  During my thirties and forties I was juggling pregnancies, raising three kids, trying to make a career in journalism, housekeeping—the usual multitasking monster.

Today, every morning, I get up, get myself a cup of coffee and as I settle in to read three newspapers, I breathe a silent prayer of thanks that I don’t have to get up at six a.m., prepare lunches, don office-worthy clothes, push into an over-crowded subway and arrive at the office at 8 a.m.

Here are some of the things I’ve done since turning 65 (most of them since turning 70):

--I went back to my original love, painting, signed up for classes at the local museum, have exhibited and sold art in several shows, and decorated three restaurants with my paintings or photographs.

--I started a blog, “A Rolling Crone” and have written 390 posts in the past six years.

--I’ve traveled to India for a three-day Hindu wedding, visited the Taj Mahal and, in Varanasi, drifted at dawn in a small boat on the Ganges, watching the laughing yogis doing their morning exercises and the cremation ghats burning bodies on shore.

---I’ve visited the El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary in Michoachan, Mexico, where millions of monarch butterflies spend the winter clustered in the fir trees. This involved climbing a mountainside at such high altitude that I had to stop every 20 yards or so to get my breath, but it was well worth it.

---I’ve visited a beach in Nicaragua at night, lantern in hand, watching hundreds of sea turtle babies emerge from the sand, and helped them in their journey toward the ocean, where they would swim to Africa, then return to this beach one day to lay their eggs.

--and I’ve celebrated Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico (twice)

--In 2009 I participated in my 50^th high school reunion in Edina, Minnesota, helped gather everyone’s biography for the Reunion Book,  and since then have explored Manhattan with high-school friends during several “mini-reunions”—most recently three weeks ago when we walked north from the bottom of Central Park, stopped for lunch by the boat pond, then visited exhibits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , and wound up eating dinner in the Great Hall Balcony Bar accompanied by live classical music.

---The most life-enhancing thing I’ve done in my 70’s is to meet my newborn first grandchild in August of 2011.  Since then, I’ve traveled with her and her parents to Nicaragua, Greece, Miami and Manhattan, watching her grow into her own person and sharing with her the places, songs, games and books I loved 70 years ago , when I was her age. (As every grandparent knows, rearing your own kids is wonderful, but you never have time or energy to watch and wonder at their development; you’re just too tired and worried about doing things right.  That’s why being a grandparent is so much more fun.)

My mother died at the age of 74 of cardiomyopathy after a long, slow decline to the point where she was too weak to open the door to her bedroom and weighed about 85 pounds.  But she didn’t want to die at that time.

My father died at 80 after about six years of suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and dementia—perhaps Alzheimer’s.  He spent the last year or two unable to communicate, curled in a fetal position.   That’s why I say that-- if and when I’m diagnosed with Alzheimer’s-- I intend to investigate and schedule an illegal physician-assisted death.

(Mr. Emanuel writes, “Since the 1990s I have actively opposed legalizing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.”),

But for the moment, as I prepare for my 74^th birthday, I still take Pilates classes, wear my “Fitbit” to measure my daily activity, and manage to rack up more than 10,000 steps a day.  I still can sprawl on the floor to play with my granddaughter or lift her into her stroller. I still can drive the 180 miles between our Massachusetts farmhouse and her Manhattan apartment, while listening to CDs in an effort to learn Spanish—which she speaks to her other grandma.  I can still do the crossword in the Times or read a menu without wearing glasses.

But I‘ll probably need them 18 years from now, Mr. Emanuel, when I’m scanning The New York Times for your obituary.