“What brings you all here?” asked the librarian who ran the library’s Death Café. As I gave that some thought, the woman beside me, who earlier flashed me her fellow geriatric’s smile of recognition, announced firmly, “The thinning of the ranks.” It was like being jabbed with an electric prod. I’d experienced so much rank-thinning in recent years. My thoughts turned immediately to Alan Solomonow, the peace activist who died during COVID’s long season of dying. (Parkinson’s took him.) We became friends in the early 80s around a notorious dispute: Israel-Palestine. Solomonow would speak about pe ..read more

In the world of senior living, living with intention means many things. For one, it means deciding for yourself if/when it’s the right time to move into a senior living community. Unfortunately, many people wait too long to make this decision for themselves, and it then becomes a decision that their family has to make for them. Visiting senior living communities, such as Quail Park of Lynnwood, before you want or need to move puts you in the driver’s seat. You know what you like and what you enjoy doing. By visiting different communities you can narrow down, for yourself and your family, the c ..read more

In Part 1 of this four-part series, you learned how to determine your loved one’s needs and your own as you prepare to be a caregiver. In Part 2, you’ll learn why taking care of yourself is essential to your role and how best to do it. Part 1: Preparing for Caring Part 2: Looking After Yourself Part 3: Getting Extra Help Part 4: When Caregiving Ends Doing the best you can for your loved one requires meeting your own needs, too. While traveling on an airplane, have you ever wondered why, when demonstrating the use of emergency oxygen masks, flight attendants tell you to put on your own mask fir ..read more

When I travel, I make it a habit to collect only one thing: memories. The most treasured keepsake of any trip I take is the journal I bring home, filled with descriptions and observations of the people I’ve met, the places I’ve seen, and the experiences I’ve had. Thinking back, it seems I’ve always had a desire to capture my discoveries and eureka moments in a journal. On my first trip to Europe, as a 14-year-old, I collected and logged my experiences in a file of a hundred postcards, each numbered and packed with my notes. Thereafter, every trip I took inspired my passion for filling up ..read more

Longevity planning can keep unwelcome changes from raining on your parade. Mark Twain famously said everyone complains about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it. It is a pity Mr. Twain never met a longevity advisor! Longevity planning experts are changing our third act forecast from storm clouds gathering to clear blue skies. So, what exactly is this practice of longevity planning, and how can it help us achieve our retirement goals? For most of us, we want to live healthy, engaged, and relaxed lives. We want to pursue our passions, share our knowledge, and cultivate gratitude ..read more

The 2023 United Nations World Happiness Report ranks Finland as the happiest country globally—its fifth year as number one—with Denmark a close second. The top 5 happiest countries in the world are all Nordic countries. Where does the United States rank? Sadly, at 19.  Perhaps, we could learn to be happier if we incorporated a little more hygge—a philosophy central to the Danish culture—into our lives. Hygge, pronounced hoo-guh, is a Danish word that infers “a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment.” The hygge lifestyle is all abo ..read more

I’m 75. I figure I can reasonably live to age 90. So that gives me 15 more years of life. That’s a fair amount of time when you think of it. I could get a lot done in that amount of time. What will I do with these precious remaining years? I don’t want the final 15 years to slip away like sand slipping through my fingers. I want to live them with intention. Intention is a funny sounding word. In-tenshun. In-TENSION. I find it amusing, and somewhat ironic, that the word “intention”—meaning determination to do something or to act in a certain way—can be heard as “in-TENSION.” This sounding of th ..read more

The idea of back surgery has always scared the hell out of me. Just the thought of doctors wielding scalpels, saws, and other scary surgical tools in my lumbar spine area makes me apoplectic. So like many septuagenarians who have dealt with lower back issues for decades, but feared surgery, I tried addressing the pain and discomfort with a smorgasbord of less scary, less-invasive techniques. I started with exercise. I joined a gym and met with a trainer who suggested a couple of stretches and exercises especially designed for older people with back issues. I did them religiously and prayed for ..read more

Enlightened aging and living with intention involve learning about aging and then paying attention to what happens as we age. Proactive people look ahead, acting in anticipation of future events including problems, needs and changes. Enlightened agers know that change will come with age and can accept that. But part of being proactive is that we work to influence the changes that will occur, we act with intention when they occur, and understand the setting in which they occur. We can anticipate that most of us will seek and need more medical care as we get older. One challenge a proactive ager ..read more

Being intentional about where you invest will help leave a better world for your grandchildren and theirs. As a child growing up in the 1950s, I would bring a dollar to school every Wednesday to deposit in our local Dime Savings Bank, with each deposit being handwritten in my bankbook. That experience taught me to put a “little something” away all through my working years. Now, I have a tidy sum of money that will support me through my retirement and, I hope, help bolster my children’s and grandchildren’s futures—but only if the world is not consumed by raging forest fires, unprecedented storm ..read more