February 4 Forum

Bill B

I’m talking about bucket lists. I’m talking about how you sit down with someone.  It’s nice to go to a movie about bucket lists.  What’s more important is this. Who do you sit down with to talk about your bucket list?  And in some ways, it’s what Gay Turman does as a psychologist, it’s what pastors do. There’s a lot of ways in which we end up kind of sorting through our priorities.  I’m proposing a new way, a much broader, more expansive way, in which we deal with getting assistance through the many different factors and challenges during the last twenty years of life.

Jack

I’m going to challenge this concept a little bit. I’ve experienced it with some patients and I’m curious and I’m particularly curious how you psychologists deal with this compressing into this last third state, this third act, as you call it, Bill. Stuff that maybe you should have been doing all your life.  Like what we’re seeing and what we’re facing right now. It is a mitigation for lost time.  Is this something that we should have been doing throughout our life? Maybe this third act doula is not necessary or maybe not as acutely necessary.

Whereas over the last fifty years, we have compressed so much work into those fifty years between twenty and seventy, that we are now dealing with an important question: what do I want to do during the last years of my life?  What’s my bucket list?  What’s important to me now during the last decade or two of life, rather than something we probably should have been doing for all our life.

Bill B

Jack, let me push back a bit.  I think what you’re talking about is the stuff that’s coming out in all the literature about the second act. What do we do in retirement?  What do we do with and during the third act. To me, there’s something that’s beyond that with the third one, third act.  I think there’s something beyond just simply figuring out what we’re going to do after we retire. I think other issues are emerging. There is something a little bit beyond retirement-related issues.

Gay

Can I add a little bit to what Bill is saying?  I have a friend who’s actually a late-stage doula. And I appreciate your perspective, Jack.  I really like that because the way that I’ve always thought about it and conceptualized it is very much what you said, Bill, is having someone to touch the person, having someone to provide care and being available as more of an emotional component.

I mean, I think a lot about that. Obviously, this relates to many parts of my life because of my work, but that as a possible widowed person who’s in their life alone. Their kids have established their own lives.  They live wherever they live and aren’t there for this person.  And as we enter into that life and lose our friends and family, I see it more like an emotional kind of component, not so much as checking the boxes off, but having somebody there as a support person to make decisions, to help make decisions about what the rest of my life should look like?  What are the things I keep?  What are the things I hold onto?  What are the things I pursue?  What are the things I let go of?  That’s how I think about it. I don’t know if that’s accurate.