Another country: navigating the emotional terrain of our elders
by Mary Bray Pipher
New York: Riverhead Books, c1999
Summary:
Scenarios to bridge the communication gap of children with their aging parents and grandparents.
Reviews
Cynthia Morrow-Hattal
…a hard yet compassionate look at what it means to help those we love age, as well as a clear-eyed view of what lies ahead for each of us as we approach our later years.
November 9, 2018
This is not a particularly comforting book or easy reading. Pipher has given us a hard,
yet compassionate, look at what it means to help those we love age, as well as a clear-eyed
view of what lies ahead for each of us as we approach our later years. She points
out the recent societal changes that have led to older people no longer being cared for
until the end of their lives by the family group, instead being placed in elder care
facilities, moved out of their own homes and into unfamiliar places filled with equally
displaced strangers. We as a society have willfully, and somewhat thoughtlessly,
arranged ourselves into peer groupings, the young with the young, the middle-aged with
the middle-aged, and the elderly with the elderly. Whereas mankind has previously lived
with many generations in a household, today’s seniors have often chosen to live in
“adult communities” away from their family’s younger members or have been left in
place while the family moved away. The result is often tragic isolation and generational
misunderstanding.
Old age is a state of being for which no one can truly be prepared, an inevitability that
may lead to the loss of stamina, health, abilities, friends, and worst of all, respect.
Pipher is a practicing psychologist who points out that what is easily overlooked in a
younger person, forgetting to turn off the stove, losing keys, perhaps searching for the
right word, is suddenly attributed to the onset of dementia in an older person. First go
the car keys, then other adult rights and pleasures such as living alone. Older people
may become understandably vigilant in masking their weaknesses and needs for fear of
losing the independence they cherish. Their loved ones are baffled by the eventual
discovery of medical problems that may have existed for years but have gone
undetected, unreported, and untreated.
Pipher gives us a less than glowing report of “the Golden Years” while showing how
very difficult it is for those caring for elderly relatives to find a way to be compassionate
and yet still be good to themselves in the process. She substantiates her findings with
moving, often heartbreaking, stories and interviews from her private practice
experiences. Her work highlights the frequency of generational misunderstandings, the
sadness, the emotional mine fields, and yet gives the reader excellent suggestions for
finding ways to make this time of transition work better for all involved. It is a call for
kindness as well as awareness, planning in place of denial, and a compassionate
understanding of the difficulty of the caregiver as well as the person reaching the final
stage of life.
