Super Agers

 We all know some of those people who never seem to miss a beat no matter how old they are. One that I knew well was my mom. At 99 years old, she  was sharper than people half her age.. She used a smart phone and got along well with it until she had to change phones or upgrade. Mom watched videos on her phone and liked to look at Facebook.

At one time, Mom did counted cross-stitch, sewed her own clothes, worked crossword puzzles and word search. She played the guitar and loved jam sessions. In her nineties, she played with our family band, and got more applause than the rest of us put together.

I inherited Mom’s love of reading. Mom was one of my beta readers for my blog books, and she had a collection of books. She read daily until macular degeneration stole too much of her eyesight.

In short, Mom was a Super Ager because of a lifetime of keeping her brain active and good genetics. There was never a time in her life when my mom was overweight. She never had trouble with her blood sugar, and her blood pressure only seemed to spike when she had a cataract removed.

Someone asked me if Mom ate healthy food. She lived a block from McDonald’s and often had biscuits and gravy for breakfast and chicken nuggets or a hamburger for lunch. For dinner, and on weekends, my sister-in-law normally sent food by my brother. Basically, Mom ate what she wanted to eat, but she did not overeat.

Another Super Ager trait is to talk to friends and family often. My mom talked to almost all of her kids every day. It got to the point where we would talk during our unofficial “scheduled” time. Mom knew when any of us went to the doctor or had tests and would make sure the rest of the family was informed. She enjoyed family and friends dropping by.  

Mom checked off almost all the boxes on the Super Ager checklist, and you could tell it. I think somewhere along the line, she must have gulped water from the fountain of youth. She never looked her age, and more importantly, as the decades flew by, she never acted like an old person.

We have no guarantees in life that our brains will remain healthy for a lifetime, and often Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia are the luck of the draw. Like the old saying goes, use it or lose it.

I find that I have more mental glitches as time goes on and a brain scan showed that I have mild white matter disease. Considering my age and my sarcoidosis diagnosis, I can live with mild changes. I’m confident that I still have plenty of white matter that’s healthy. My doctor said that it doesn’t mean that I’ll get Alzheimer’s but it is important to watch my “numbers” so that I don’t develop vascular dementia.

When I was working, I thought retirement would be a time to relax. My writer friend, Judy, used to say: If you think you’re busy now, retire!”

I didn’t think it was possible, but I finally had to limit my retirement work time by creating a schedule. It certainly helps as too much multitasking creates too much unnecessary work. I get more accomplished when I work on one project at a time.

When I was working, I worked forty hours a week, and I had evenings and weekends off. Well, not exactly “off” since I was a caregiver and finished my bachelor’s degree at the same time.

After I retired, I thought it was okay to work all day and half the night to get everything done. Now, that I’m handling my own affairs and Harold’s Estate and Trust, I have to spend hours each week to keep up. Throw in a little volunteer work and hobbies, and, yeah, I need that schedule.

Although it was never my nature, I’ve disciplined myself to be an occasional guiltless procrastinator. When I think about the extra time it gave me to spend with my Super Ager mom while she was still with us, I’m so glad that I did.

Copyright © June 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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Care for the Caregiver

 

I have a story in the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul book Care for the Caregiver. My story is about my mom at a time she traveled from her home on the Lake of the Ozarks to help me take care of Jim. The story “Under Control” is a snapshot of the way my mom filled in for the professional caregivers on the days they weren’t scheduled, or the days they didn’t show up.

The care of a person with dementia falls heavily on the primary caregiver. It takes a village to care for a person with dementia, and I was fortunate enough to have a village. I was also only in my mid-forties, and still was overwhelmed at times. Nights and weekends were mostly alone time with Jim.

As his disease progressed, I found that caregiving was on the job training for a job I never envisioned. Jim was an intelligent, practical person. He was mechanical and could fix anything. Vietnam had left him in pain from a neck injury and in torment with flashbacks and PTSD.

As if life hadn’t dealt him enough blows, at forty-nine, he began his ten-year journey into a strange new world where his brain didn’t function normally. His behavior went from unusual to bizarre.

My mom called it “unlearning” and that was a good description. Jim’s aphasia meant he lost his ability to communicate. He would often say, “Right here, but I can’t find it.” Little things became big issues, and when he couldn’t say the letters on the eye chart, they would not issue a new drivers license.

 Watching someone you love lose his ability to think, speak, and a lifetime of learned skills causes a thousand shades of grief. The long-term care decision is a final blow when you realize that the last shred of independence is gone. As an exhausted stressed-out caregiver, the time had come to make the best decision for both of us.

I never relinquished my role as a caregiver and advocate for the best care for Jim. Some people thought I had lost my mind when I bathed, fed, and provided personal care for him in the nursing home.  I did it for him, but also for me. I had to know that he was as comfortable as possible.

It takes a village. The nurses, nurse’s aides, Jim’s family, our family, and other health professionals all did our parts. Family fed him, often bringing home-cooked food, or his favorites from fast food places. I took him through Dairy Queen so often that they knew what I was going to order. I took him for drives, walks in the park on nice days, and down the hallways during bad weather.

We did as much as we could for as long as we could. Although Jim didn’t have his normal sense of humor, he still had a way of smirking when he saw I was doing something wrong. The glimpses of Jim being his old onery self from time to time became cause for celebration.

I tried not to think about what might have been or what would never be. Life became moment to moment. I was not alone. I had my village to care for Jim and me, the caregiver.

 https://www.facebook.com/ChickenSoupfortheSoul

 Copyright © June 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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Stormy Weather

Mother Nature has been throwing a hissy fit for two months now. It’s been good to make the grass grow, but part of the yard is a soggy mess. The guy that mows my yard got the mower stuck in the backyard.

The storms have my dog freaking out, but her geriatric legs won’t let her jump up on the footstool and into the bed where her “safe” spot resides. She still thinks she has to disturb my sleep, and I pet her until she becomes a little calmer. I put the blanket on the floor by my bed and after she shaped it into a ball, she sauntered into the bathroom where she usually sleeps. As soon as I dozed off, she was back. By then it was five a.m., so I got up and fixed coffee. With me wide awake, she slept until nine.

We’ve had freakish weather including hail, wind, flash floods, and the occasional tornado warning. The last tornado warning was in “northeastern” Pettis County, which is pretty vague. Of course, all my local stations were off the air due to weather. If the tornado had been in Kansas or Northern Missouri, the stations would have preempted all the programming to cover the storms for hours.

Since I didn’t have Mom to tell me exactly where the storm was, I looked out the windows to see pouring rain, but no ominous clouds. I didn’t bother to go to the basement. Later I saw a picture of a wall cloud taken on the road to the west of my house. The storm went on to cause damage in a town north of Pettis County. The threat didn’t materialize here and for that I am thankful.

After being around Jim, I respect storms, but I’m not afraid of them. Jim told me once that after Vietnam, he sure wasn’t afraid of any storm. He might send the rest of us to the cellar, but he would be standing outside watching for a funnel cloud.

The storms haven’t been only outside, there’s been plenty of rain in my heart. The past year and a half has been an unrelenting cascade of thunderbolts to my soul. Sometimes it’s hard to believe things can’t be much worse, and then it is.

 I’ve survived being widowed twice, the loss of close family, deaths of good friends, and other crushing, sorrowful events. Then, I realized that it was much better to focus on what I have rather than what I have not. I have vivid dreams with adventures centered around the people I have loved. They sometimes seem just a breath away. In the stillness, I can hear the echoes of people who have been gone for years or who recently left this world of ours.

When the storms pass and the sun comes shining through, I feel my spirits lift. I haven’t lost my ability to laugh.

As the years, pass, I am getting stronger. I can’t think of a single person that I have loved who would want me to die with him or her. They would expect me to go on living and not merely exist. I am thankful that each of them shared good times with me and helped me through the difficult times.

More storms are predicted in the coming days. My weather app says “grab an umbrella.” During a tornado warning, the meteorologist tells us to go to our “safe place.” On the other end of the spectrum, we have already had a few “heat” advisories.

On hot, sultry days, we play it cool. During stormy weather, we weather the storms.   

 

Copyright © June 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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