What most alarms (worries, panics, mortifies) you when you think of what lies ahead for you as a woman – possibly aging alone – in your life’s second half?
Would you believe the one thing women over the age of 50 dread more than anything else when it comes to our aging is the prospect – or reality – of aging “alone”?
It’s true. Just climb into that space for a moment and quickly run the “Aging and Alone” movie through your mind. Do you hear alarm bells going off? If so, come on back to the here and now and consider why you have that response.
A Quick Story Of My Introduction To Aging Alone
Let me tell you a quick story about my realization that I was, indeed, aging alone: It’s been about 3 1/2 years since my nearly 93 year old mother died unexpectedly the Saturday night before Thanksgiving.
I’d been her primary caregiver for the last 6 of her life.
In all that time, I knew she’d some day be gone. I just never gave myself permission to play out what it might mean for my life when it happened.
I wish I’d done that, if for no other reason than to open the door a crack on validating feelings that were to come as I moved forward in life . . . alone.
Security Alarms . . Inner Alarms . . Aging Alarms
Ahh, feelings . . Let me tell you how raw those feelings were . . and how the alarm played out when it really started to blast across my thinking. (If you’ve been there, I’m sure you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not, just imagine your response.)
First, to set things up: I have to tell you that my aging parents – who lived out in the country about 7 miles from the nearest town – had installed a home security system a couple years before my father passed away in 2000. They set it religiously every night, because my dad was a stickler for such things.
After my father died and I moved back from the city to help my mom, I just as often ignored the system as set it. Needless to say, the whole idea of that alarm going off and completely destroying the peace and quiet of the countryside home where I’d been raised wasn’t something I cherished.
Besides, my family home didn’t exactly compete with the high crime areas of other places I’d lived, so the whole thing seemed rather a bit of overkill.
Sometimes my mother would click in the code before going to bed, which always resulted in a glaring blast the next morning when I tried to open the door and take the dog out. That got me scrambling. Aside from that, though, use of the thing was haphazard at best.
Then, in late 2005, my mom died. My brother and his family came home, and stayed through to the end of the Thanksgiving week.
I don’t remember much of that time, aside from going through the motions of trying to do what I thought she would have wanted me to to make sure Thanksgiving happened in spite of all the emptiness. Mostly, I was a raw mess of nerves. (Luckily, no one pointed that out to me.)
Then the day came – as days always do – for the rest of my family to return home and back to life and/or college. Suddenly, I was more fully and completely alone than I ever could have imagined being . . . even in all the years I’d been living on my own. Needless to say, I set the alarm.
But around midnight, that alarm went off!
I’ve never in my life heard anything so loud, shrill, penetrating, and terrifying as that ‘blessed’ sound! And I doubt I’ve ever before been as scared. The worst part, of course, was that I couldn’t get it to stop.
That night . . That alarm . . Aging alone . . in a nutshell
Just imagine for a moment – if you can – being completely alone in an old house out in the middle of the dark countryside . . nerves completely worn to the edge . . it’s very, very early morning . . a beastly racket set to a pitch that would deafen the saints themselves going off . . and refusing to stop going off . . and continuing to go off for 10 . . 20 . . more than 30 minutes . . a neighbor calls to ask if there’s a problem . . the security company calls to ask if they should send the police . . and still the thing blasts on . . I’m in tears . . the noise just won’t stop . . the police call . . my neighbor arrives and together we find the outlet into which the entire security system is plugged . . and unplug it! . . except, what if someone – a bad person – actually was outside . . now the police think our system is sending nothing but false alarms . . I’m alone as I’ve never before in my life been alone . . and I’m suddenly aging fully alone . . and alarmed as hell at the situation!
Yep, that’s what you call aging alone in high alarm status. It was a painful situation in the middle of a very painful time. It couldn’t have been much worse.
The “Moral” of the story
The thing is: Did you get the point I was trying to smack you over the head with in that story?
Aging alone sets off all kinds of alarms in our lives – some real, loud, and horrifying, like the one I just described.
The vast majority of those alarms, however, tend to sneak up from behind and wrap their wirey fingers around your throat to choke all that’s good in your repertoire of aging right out of you till the end of time . . unless and until they’re stopped by something stronger.
And even though we recognize the reality of our situations, our imagination empowers those alarms in ways that just don’t benefit the aging we want for ourselves.
What Alarms YOU About Aging Alone?
What is it about aging alone? What does our aging alone say to us about us? Why the alarms at all? And why now? What’s changed in our perspective of the world and of ourselves in that world that now we’re worried about the whole “alone” thing as never before?
Well, I could say it goes back to our most primitive selves – which it does – and that old fight or flight response thing – which it does. That’s not all, though.
Pick a label . . Any label:
There are other potentially alarming things at work in our aging alone. They live in our self perceptions, our beliefs, our fears of what lies ahead.
Have any of these mindsets invaded YOUR inner world?
How many of these “aging alone” labels are setting off alarms for YOU?
When you think of aging alone, what is it you’re really thinking . . about “aging . . and “alone”?
Does Aging Alone =
- Lonely?
- Isolated”
- Vulnerable”
- Unattached = Unwanted = Unloved?
- Invisible?
- Ugly?
- Unheard = Silent?
- Estranged from family?
- Unproductive = Useless?
- Orphaned?
- Unimportant = Disposable?
- Needy = A Burden?
- A Failure?
- Impoverished?
Do any of these terms live in your thinking, and set off alarms for you? If so, what’s that alarm all about? What does it signify?
How do you deal with the alarm?
How do you turn off the alarm? Or, do you?
(I’m the first to admit that these labels are very broad categorizations. And I guarantee there are many more should you want to go looking, but these are enough, don’t you think?)
What CAN You Do To Turn Off The Alarms?!
What you have to know is that labels are just words till you take them to heart.
And that’s not what you want to do, because it’s in taking labels to heart that you prime the alarms.
And once an alarm’s primed, the slightest breeze can set it off and give it a life of its own.
What you also have to realize is that once we’ve internalized alarm labels like these, their power grows right along with your aging.
A label that might make you just a little uncomfortable in your 30′s, can be driving your self esteem and your decisions about yourself and your life by the time you’re in your 60′s and beyond.
And if it’s not a great label, that’s not a good thing!
So what CAN you do about the stuff of aging alone that alarms you?
Well, first remember that alarms aren’t all bad. Our internal alarms are the first line of defense against people and things that can potentially cause us pain. That’s good.
But also remember that any time you empower one of those internal alarms to govern your life, you lose out to a great deal of life that’s meant to be lived. That’s not so good.
And when it comes to the labels we attach to our Aging Alone, know that:
It’s good to be alarmed about the sorts of things these labels signify because, if accepted, they place serious limitations how we define ourselves.
Which means sometimes alarms are the kick in the seat we need to move in a different direction:
- Being alarmed about the labels means you’re thinking about them.
- And that means you’ve started to change them.
- And once change starts, there’s no limit to where you can take it!
The moral of the story (Yes, there is a moral) is a big one: Don’t hide from from the parts of aging alone that alarm you. Look them full square in the face. Then peel them back to their source. Once you’re at the source, you’re at the place of choice.
The caveat of the story (Yes, there’s also a caveat) is that the stuff that created our alarms way back when is often stuck so deeply in who we are that it can be tough to recognize the source without some help.
That’s why I’m here. Don’t hesitate to ask for my help if you’re struggling to calm the aging alone alarms, and get on with living.
. . . . . . . .
Okay, that’s about all I have for now. I’ll be working on all this alarming stuff a bit more in the next post. If you’ve any questions or comments before then, please share.
And, keep growing my friend!
Gail
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I must admit that your list of alarms is truly alarming. But, it is my experience that most alarms are false alarms and reacting to them as if they were really alarming gives power to our most vivid fears. I can understand how aging alone might cause one to fear being alone but, in fact, being alone is almost always a choice we make.
You’re definitely right on one level, Jeri. THe thing is: when someone’s in the midst of worrying, stressing over, panicking about, and revving up the alarms . . that choice point disappears from conscious thought. The goal in each case is to peel back the stress and reintroduce choice in a way that the person can wrap their mind around while the stressor that hid that choice from them is still in the room. Dis-arm the stress and return choice to its rightful owner, and you’re heading for home.
I am certain that you are right because your writing reveals a beautiful and complex soul. I, on the other hand, am a more simple organism. I have learned that the only way for me to stop worrying is for me to stop worrying.
It is often good to be alone but loneliness is very hard work. A General commanding troops to their certain death, now that is loneliness. A President, deciding to drop a bomb on noncombatants is loneliness. For the rest of us loneliness is often self imposed and not very important to the ages.
Point taken, Jeri. The thing is: For those of us whose decisions aren’t quite so meta as commanding troops to certain death or dropping bombs on noncombatants, it’s the ages themselves that are of little significance.
What matters is of the moment, because that’s where we do our living. If loneliness – or aloneness – are eating up mental and emotional capacity, there’s little room for that living to happen. The goal here is to open a path for living, and then to help the path expand across the field of loneliness till living is the important thing – and loneliness, no more nor less a driving factor than any other part of life.
I agree, living is the important thing. Most of us, though we often don’t know it, have little time for anything but living. I’m sure that there are those who can live well while alone, however, for some of us life is much richer in a crowd, even if only a crowd of two.
This is a great resource for my hospice volunteers. We often see the spouse who is left alone and faced with the fears and stress of dying alone, of living alone.
I will add this blog to my community forums at http://volunteertrainingonline.ning.com/
I’m glad you find my posts beneficial to the people you serve, Robin. Please let me know if there’s anything they’re looking for that I might be able to provide to help them through this time. I’d be glad to do it.