Does old age trap you?: the loss of decision-making and the limits of care
We often think of old age as a serene stage. We imagine a quiet life, surrounded by memories and affection, where there is finally time for oneself. But when we listen to it from the inside — from those who live it, from those who inhabit it — much more complex images appear. Perhaps, for those of us who do not yet inhabit this space, emotional losses come to mind, the loss of loved ones, but here I will speak of another kind of loss: the loss of control. Over the body, over spaces, over decisions. And that hurts more than arthritis. The loss of control over one’s own life is the worst prison to which we can be subjected. Emotional relationships (those that begin from the heart, from the gut, motivated by the desire to love and be loved) sometimes turn into those small unbearable prisons when the other person insists on taking away our control over our life, over the house or the neighborhood where we live, over what to have for breakfast, over how to spend free time. Sometimes those limitations do not come from the other (what a pity not to know sometimes how to escape in time from those jailers) but from circumstances that arise from within, that surround us and from which we cannot rid ourselves.
Old age does not appear suddenly. It sometimes arrives in bursts, but generally it comes to us with prior warning through small signs. They can be more or less subtle, like a difficulty in climbing the stairs. The fear of falling when the pavement is not very stable. The more or less explicit need (or made explicit by others, with their good intentions) to hire someone to do the general cleaning or to clean those corners we have stopped noticing. Old age can also be the first time you hear: “Mom, be careful,” said by those you used to have to take care of until recently. And then age begins to weigh on you. Not as a number, but as a belief system maintained by others (the other) and which we also know has taken root inside us. A bit of a mix between what others believe you can or cannot do and what you believe (or know) you have stopped being able to do.
“Of course, I consider myself old when I have to climb somewhere to clean the windows, I can’t do it anymore. I get dizzy,” a 73-year-old woman told me some time ago. “Before, we used to do it together, but now neither of us can anymore. My husband is sicker…”. These are snippets of conversations from my research that condense several key elements: fragility, weakening mutual support, the desire for autonomy.
Among my interviewees, the desire to keep taking care of oneself, even if with partial help, was strongly repeated, and it was especially focused on the home (reinforcing, I will insist a lot, the importance that the physical space we inhabit has). “I have to be in very bad shape for my house to be in very bad shape. Because I like to have it in very good shape,” another woman, then 65, told me. Reviewing my interviews, I would also highlight the motivation of another 82-year-old woman to resist delegating tasks to a hired person: “I prefer to do it myself, because if not I’ll end up like my husband (in a very fragile situation). If I start sitting down, I won’t move anymore.”
The importance of the home reappears as a symbol, in addition to being a refuge. The house is not just a place where one ages: it is where one proves (to others and to oneself, although among men this desire also appeared, reflected in other aspects, as the grandfather of my friend Diego pointed out to me) that one still can. It is a thermometer of the abilities we have and maintain. And maintaining these abilities — even if sometimes we do not do so as fully as we believe or wish — is an act of resistance. “Damn! Just yesterday afternoon I was playing plumber, and I saved myself from having to call the plumber. I fixed this whole house myself,” the grandfather of my friend, then 82 and now deceased, told me some time ago. The gesture is not a minor one. Each domestic action that is preserved is an affirmation of the self, of who we were, of who we are. Of whom we still are.
But there are moments when one simply can’t anymore. When the body says enough, or when the environment no longer allows one to continue as before. And that’s when the family’s role comes into play, especially that of the children. And with it, a shift in power as profound as it is seldom named.
Roles are reversed. Those who once gave orders now obey. Those who once decided now receive instructions. And although sometimes they do so with gratitude, and other times with resignation, there is still something uncomfortable in this plot twist, sometimes a little tyrannical. “My daughter tells me I have to come down a notch, that she’s already talked to a friend to put my furniture I don’t know where” (…) “No, no, I’m not putting my furniture anywhere.” Old age as an imposed need for resistance against trivial things, the conflict that arises and is imposed, the fear of no longer deciding where one’s own furniture goes.
Certain impositions may come not from “punishment” but from good wishes. Thus, care, when imposed without asking, can become a soft form of guardianship. And guardianship, at a certain age, hurts. I always remember the case of another woman who told me about a move not motivated by her own desire but by that of her son, who in turn was motivated by fear and good intentions because the neighborhood’s makeup had changed and he perceived a sense of insecurity: “I’m leaving here so as not to upset him anymore. And now I’m paying more, the house is smaller, I had to throw things away…”. When rereading the transcript of her interview, I don’t recall any kind of drama, but rather that mix of sadness and love that runs through many family relationships. Because caring, even if motivated by the best wishes, should not involve deciding for the other person.
In certain cases, older people end up in homes they did not choose, living with schedules, rules, or silences imposed on them. “They haven’t taken me back to my house,” Isabel, 89, told me when she began what would be called “rotating housing” after her widowhood, living one month in each of her children’s homes. For me, there was something devastating in that phrase (which she uttered as if it were nothing) because of what it implied: that her wishes no longer would count. This is, for me, one of the greatest fears of old age: to stop choosing, to stop being able to choose. Of course, it is a fear that in reality runs through my entire life. Not being able to choose, not being able to decide about daily life (these decisions already framed in the economy, work, the course of society) as a fear of life passing by. Entering adulthood was, when I was a child, an image of decision-making ability. Later it comes into conflict with reality (money, time, inevitable and self-imposed obligations), but losing it again due to the decisions, needs, or fears of others seems to me one of those terrible scenarios. Even if it is motivated by the good wishes and intentions of those around us.
