One of the more painful memories in my life was telling my father that he was no longer capable of driving or living alone. A tall, physically active man, Dad had worked since his teens in the Great Depression, fought in World War II, married and raised two boys to manhood, and dealt with the death of his spouse, burying his wife of more than 50 years. He was a proud man, always ready to help others and capable of handling life’s setbacks with equal measures of grit and grace. To him, being a man meant being able to take care of yourself.
Over the previous decade, I had watched his physical and mental faculties gradually fade. The decline was slower in the beginning, but reached a faster pace as he approached 80 years of age. After a minor car accident in which he had turned into the path of an approaching vehicle, the attending policeman called me aside and insisted that I take away his keys.
As the eldest son and his only living relative within the state, the responsibility of care fell to me. I struggled with the irony of our situation, the reversal of natural roles where parent directs child. Despite my trepidation, however, taking away his car keys was for his own safety and others on the road – a loving child has no good alternative in that position.
Aging and Its Consequences
While everyone ages at a different pace, the consequences are inevitable for everyone. As you grow older, you are likely to experience some or all of the following physical and mental changes:
According to government statistics, there were more than 4.2 million divorces between the years of 2006 and 2011, about half the rate of marriages in the same period. Statistically, about 40% of first marriages end in divorce, while almost three-quarters of third marriages fail.
Divorce is often costly, and can be devastating for all parties involved – partners, children, parents, and grandparents. According to the Holmes-Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale, only the death of a spouse is a more traumatic, stress-causing event; divorce is more stressful than separation, a jail term, the death of a close family member, or a personal injury or serious illness. Fortunately, time does heal all wounds, and understanding the healing process can help speed the path to recovery.
Going Through the Grief of Divorce
Many counselors believe that divorcees go through the five stages of grief that are also experienced after a loved one dies. The stages, first enumerated by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book “On Death and Dying,” include:
Denial
. This may start while your marriage is still intact. It’s a defense mechanism to cope with pain, usually because you can’t believe divorce is happening to you.
Anger
. It’s natural to feel furious with yourself for being a fool, or your spouse for rejecting you, but uncontrolled anger can make a bad situation worse, especially if there are children involved. Unfortunately, many attorneys capitalize on this anger to extend divorce proceedings, or gain a negotiating advantage. While it’s natural to want to punish your spouse, it’s ultimately counter-productive to a satisfactory conclusion that allows you to move on and rebuild your life.
Bargaining
. This is the stage where you try to “fix what happened,” to go back and try again without the prior mistakes. It’s rarely logical, and inevitably unsuccessful. Divorces are the culmination of dissatisfaction over many issues and many months, the likelihood of resolving them quickly or fixing what happened is not high.
Depression
. The reality of divorce is that there are significant losses experienced by everyone involved: the presumed-happy future, financial security, affection, and love. As a consequence, it’s natural to feel sad and abandoned, to even withdraw from day-to-day life. When depression becomes significant, or begins to affect your children, it’s time to seek outside help.
Acceptance
. The last stage of grief occurs when you finally accept that your marriage is over, and you put the hopes and dreams you shared with your former spouse behind you. While you may still feel anger, guilt, or depression from time to time, the episodes wane in intensity and frequency, signaling that you’re ready to pick up the pieces and move on. This is also when you recognize your own strength to set a new path to happiness. You gain a level of indifference about your former spouse, having separated your personal lives. Even when you have children together, you learn to co-parent without rehashing old hurts or using the children as a weapon against one another.
To progress through the stages of grief, eventually achieving acceptance and even forgiveness, you must reconcile certain feelings before moving forward and rebuilding your life. Dr. Phil McGraw, the widely respected psychiatrist who gained fame as Oprah Winfrey’s adviser, details the variety of emotions that most people feel during and after a divorce in his bestselling book “Real Life: Preparing for the 7 Most Challenging Days of Your Life.”
“It’s never too late” is the mantra of the Boomers – never too late to start a new career, to change physiques or hair colors, to start new hobbies, or find a new mate. While life expectancy has increased from previous generations, the likelihood of having considerable time after the death of one’s mate remains high. And the Boomer Generation is unwilling to waste precious time with regrets or feeling sorry for themselves.
With death comes grief – sometimes terrible, devastating sadness that seems as if it will never end. But it does end for most people. Dr. George Bonanno, a psychology professor at Columbia University who studies grief, explains that most surviving spouses initially oscillate between periods of deep sadness and distress and recalling good moments of laughter and joy. For most, this period lasts from six months to a year, the periods of sadness gradually lessening over time.
However, as 80-year-old poet and children’s book author Judith Viorst notes, seniors have already experienced “bad stuff” – holes in the brain from which names and dates have dropped, ailments you’ve never heard of, and attending funeral after funeral of dear friends and family. Death is not unexpected, and many have prepared emotionally to some extent for the eventuality.
A New Start
Baby Boomers are increasingly recognizing that their moment will not come again, and that there is no time to waste when you cannot see past the horizon made clearer by the death of a partner. Many feel, having fulfilled their responsibility to others as a spouse or parent, that they are finally “free to be me” for the first time in decades, to take roads not traveled and revisit choices made in their younger years. By and large, Boomers are generally confident in their abilities, resilience, and self-worth. As novelist Barbara Neely said when turning 65, “I look in the mirror more often, smile at the lovely lady, and hope I look as good as she does when I reach her age.”
Inevitably, a widow or widower will turn to other people, seeking to rebuild the social life they experienced before the death of their spouse or partner. Dating after 65 is both similar and different than dating as a teenager. There are the same butterflies, the same uncertainties about how to act, and the same insecurities about attractiveness, social position, and expectations. At the same time, there is less pressure because everyone has their scars and secrets.
With age, men generally become more tender and less aggressive, while women become more assertive and have little need for outside validation of their worth. By age 65, many people are comfortable in their own skins and are willing to accept others as they are. More importantly, the possibility of romance and the joy of intimacy never dies.
 :
While widowers over the age of 65 are more likely to remarry than widows due to the greater pool of mates from which to choose, widows are also remarrying at a greater rate than previous generations due to extended life spans. As University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz says, “We are looking at very long periods of time. If you get married at 65, you could be together for 30 years. That may seem like a long enough time to get married.” Schwartz was engaged at age 67.
The bee has always occupied a special place in man’s psyche. Young children learn the origins of babies with stories of “the birds and the bees,” while their industry is so respected that a person engaged in intense activity is “as busy as a bee.” “Spelling bees” and “quilting bees” are so named because a meeting of people working together resembles the scenes within a beehive. Closely guarded information is “none of your beeswax,” and the flappers of the 1920s popularized the “bee’s knees” to express the coolness of an object or activity.We have seen girls with “bee-stung lips,” and refer to irritated people as having a “bee in their bonnet.” And who hasn’t made a “beeline” for a special object?
As far as we know, bees have been around for about 125 million years. They are descendants of wasps, most of which are predator carnivores. Bees, however, switched from hunting prey to collecting pollen for food – a nice adaptation, since the food doesn’t fight back. Scientists have since classified nearly 20,000 species of bees, and they are found on every continent except Antarctica. They are the most efficient pollination agents in nature, a critical factor in the appearance of the world as we know it.
Notices of New ContentSign up for automatic notices when Content changes
If you are interested in seeing additional posts, articles, or books as they are published, please join our email list. Your name and email will be secure and never available to any other party. You will never be asked for confidential information or solicited to purchase anything from this site.
You will never be asked to provide your Social Security number, Credit Card details, or Passwords.
One of the more painful memories in my life was telling my father that he was no longer capable of driving or living alone. A tall, physically active man, Dad had worked since his teens in the Great Depression, fought in World War II, married and raised two boys to manhood, and dealt with the death of his spouse, burying his wife of more than 50 years. He was a proud man, always ready to help others and capable of handling life’s setbacks with equal measures of grit and grace. To him, being a man meant being able to take care of yourself.
