February 4 Forum

What I’ve noticed is that when I was younger, it was just on their birthdays that I sang. Now, at age 76, I’ve been calling them more often and we’ve been sharing childhood memories.  And it’s really very positive and uplifting.  Especially with my 75-year-old sister who’s on the opposite end of the political spectrum. We don’t talk about politics. We converse about the past. Recently, we talked about when she had a kerosene tea party at age four. She convinced me to drink kerosene. My mom flipped out, threatened we were going to have our stomachs pumped. But we didn’t.  But I still remember stuff like that. It’s some of the adventures that we had.

So in a strange way, the serves provided by late-life doula concerns family structure. As Jack noted, there are likely to be these powerful moments if you have a strong knit family, I’m finding that I’m yearning for that family I once had. I’m able to Zoom or more often by phone, just call and share and laugh.  And I just wanted to share that yearning I have. Not just the music that I can give my kids or friends that play those instruments. That’s going to be kind of my legacy, I think.

Bill B

In your statement, Mark, you just identified many important properties. You introduced the notion of legacy, which is so critical here. Often, in the past, legacy was something that you explored with a priest or someone in an equivalent role. You also identified your birthday ritual. I do the same thing. I have the birthday call every year with my kids, my brother and sister, and some friends.  How do we encourage people to do some similar honoring of other people. How do we help people recognize that what you do, Mark, provides health benefits for yourself as well as the other person. I suspect when you sing the song we could do all sorts of measurements of your health, what’s going on in your own body.  And I suspect, you know, it’s not just dopamine.

Mark

I hope there’s a lot of oxytocin in there as well.

Bill G

It’s been very interesting.  As you know, I’ve recently had a stroke and am heading downhill, but not as rapidly as one might expect. So, it’s been a fascinating and timely discussion.  Wonderful.  Thanks for sharing that, Bill.

Jeremy

Bill, I’m sorry to hear about your stroke and appreciate your perspective.