Still Rockin’ Out

I don’t often go to concerts anymore. Too loud, and I don’t like crowds. But one of my favorite singers—Mary Chapin Carpenter—was performing at one of my favorite venues—Chautauqua Hall, built in the 1898 and totally constructed of wood. It’s an intimate space with fantastic acoustics that sits above Boulder with great views in any direction.

At age 67, Carpenter can still rock, especially with her five-piece band, consisting mainly of people in their 60s (to my eyes). It was good to see older people on stage, aged to perfection after performing for 30-40 years, and having fun doing it.

The audience was similarly older. Around me were gray-haired men (a few balding) and women, some wearing hearing aids. That didn’t stop any of us from rocking out with Carpenter and her band: heads swaying in time to the music, some gentle foot stomping and singing. During the encore, we got even more rowdy—loudly clapping in time to the music and dancing, even if it was just swaying back and forth.

If there were young people watching, I could imagine their reaction to this sight: old people making fools of themselves, pretending they were still young, forgetting they had arthritis and needed hearing aids.

But what younger people don’t know (and what they’ll eventually find out) is that none of us sees ourselves as old. In the confines of our home or car, we’re still screaming to the Beatles, dancing to Bruce Springsteen and singing along with Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”

Even when I get older, I imagine listening to the Beatles and feeling the same joy I did when I was 13 and first heard them sing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Maybe I’ll even remember the words and sing along. They say that hearing is the last sense to go, so music is one of our last pleasures when we can no longer functionally move or talk. We’re not aging fools; we’re just enjoying life, even if our bodies betray us. We’ll keep dancing and singing as long as we can. I know I will.

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Seniors Left Behind Online


Traveling through Nova Scotia recently, I got another lesson in how thoroughly the world is run online.  To make a reservation for lodging, even when standing in front of the charming Harbourfront Cottages, I needed to go on the lodging’s website to see if anything is available. Many places, especially smaller ones, like B&Bs, don’t have friendly clerks waiting at the front desk to help you. You need to do all the work to acquire a room for the night.

Unfortunately, I discovered my cell phone didn’t work in Canada. That meant I didn’t get the texts from the airline telling me that my flight had been delayed or that the gate had changed. Luckily, my companion’s phone was working, but I realized once again how we have become totally dependent on this small pocket-sized device to navigate the world.

Without my cell phone, I couldn’t easily check my email, learn about the latest political scandal in the U.S. (a relief, too), get directions to the next town, or find out what friends were doing.  Because we were totally reliant on one phone, we had to make sure the battery was always charged, or we would be helpless—driving in circles—clueless without Google maps to guide us.

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Profiting from the Dying

When my father was in the last year of his life, after a stroke rendered him unable to speak or eat solid food, my siblings and I made the difficult decision of enrolling him in hospice. Based on a friend’s experiences as a hospice volunteer more than two decades ago, I expected hospice workers who would spend time with him, comfort him and make sure he was never in pain.

But what I encountered were overworked and over-stressed staff. Although the hospice we hired had promised nurses coming every day, in reality they would come irregularly and stay a short amount of time, because they had many more patients to treat. We were promised spiritual counselors who never materialized. The social worker who seemed to genuinely care about my dad took me aside one day to tell me she was leaving the company because she was being asked to take on more clients than she could handle, and so was unable to give clients the care and compassion she thought they deserved.

It wasn’t always like this. When hospice was first started (by a British nurse in 1967), it was largely maintained by volunteers, people dedicated to comforting the dying. But a hospice system that was largely composed of caring volunteers changed when Medicare started paying for hospice care, and lot of businesses got stars in their eyes about how much money they could make off dying people. The result has been what you would expect: cost-cutting measures, mainly cutting back staff, to increase profits.

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