On Befriending Our Elders

Old people! They're just like us!

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Most of us aren’t good at making friends with our elders. In individualist, capitalist societies, many of us are raised in nuclear family households where we have little contact with elders outside our own family and few models of intergenerational, non-familial friendship. From preschool onward, we are socialized to form our closest non-familial relationships almost exclusively with people of our own age. As a result, most of us grow up with no friends who are significantly younger than us, and no friends who are significantly older than us, and we carry these habits right on into adulthood.

Not having close ties to nonfamilial people who are younger than us has its own problems, but at least we were all young once. No matter how much conditions change from one generation to the next, we usually have some frame of reference for relating to younger people. We remember what it was like to be young.

But we have never been older than we are right now, so we know very little about what it’s like to be old. And the less we pay attention to the lives and experiences of our elders, the less we know what to expect as we ourselves age. This leaves us less prepared for the inevitable indignities and losses of aging, and also potentially leaves us less attuned to what can be wonderful about growing older and wiser and more experienced. By not befriending our elders, we miss out on wisdom to help us navigate our lives, today and for as long as we live.

So today let’s talk about how to form genuine, meaningful attachments with our elders – familial and otherwise.

Old People: They’re Just Like Us!

On the one hand, duh. It seems hardly worth saying that old people are like us, because of course they are. People of our parents’ generation have always been everywhere in our lives, and they could not be more familiar. We’d recognize that mom-like haircut, that dad-like silhouette, anywhere. And then our grandparents’ generation and those even older than them, presumably they’re just older versions of whoever raised us – no mystery there.

Okay, but I’m going to suggest that on the other hand, we tend to perceive old people as very Other, very not like us. The victories in their lives may seem unrelatable and frankly not very interesting. (“You saw nine different types of wading birds? Huh. Nice.”)¹ Their problems may feel remote and, God willing, will only become relevant to our own lives in some very far distant future, or not at all. (“Sciatica, huh? Bummer.”)²

But the reality is that soon enough we too will have sciatica and become interested in wading birds. Now, that’s a millennial-to-boomer example, but the principle holds regardless of how old you are. Consider:

• Gen Zers like my 27 year old neighbor may one day need to talk to her doctor about hormone replacement therapy, as I recently did.

• Boomers like my parents may one day need to live in an old folks’ home where they have no control over when meals are served, as many of the greatest generation are dealing with now.

Aging creeps up on us; it arrives as a surprise. I’ve started occasionally needing help from a younger person to navigate a new technology. It always startles me, and I always tell them, “just you wait, kid,” and they always smile and nod at me indulgently. Also, my 27 year old neighbor recently informed the rest of the adults in our co-housing (in our late 30s to mid 40s) that she has been making friends with “other middle aged people.” It took us old-timers a moment and some confounded blinking to understand that we were the “middle aged people” to whom these “others” were being likened.³ Surprise!

Soon you too will be on the cover of AARP Magazine, just like these old-timers.

I hear from the elders in my life that the surprises of aging only accelerate. One friend, upon turning 65, was startled to be congratulated by his doctor on not having died young. When my Grandma Sis died, I observed to my aunt, her oldest child, that she’s the matriarch now. She stared at me, truly startled, and said, “I am?” And when Grandma Sis was in her 90s, she was shocked one day to name that all of her college sorority sisters but one had died. Of the seventeen of them – lifelong friends who got together with their families every summer – only two still lived. Surprise!

Now, I know my elder friendships can’t really prepare me for the day my doctor congratulates me on surviving into old age, let alone for the experience of outliving all of my friends. Yet I think my relationships with elders might truly help. Indeed, they help me already.

Because I have friends who are elders, I have people who understand what it’s like to live with chronic illness. They know about bodies that don’t do what we want. They don’t think I’m a downer for bringing up my chronic pain or unreliable short term memory. They’ve been there. They have good advice.

In the locker room after water aerobics – because I have friends who are elders – I have plenty of people to ask about menopause. I get to regularly be around old women’s bodies, with all their wrinkles and body hair and body fat and scars – a truly healing experience when you’ve spent your whole life trying and failing to have a thin, taut body.

In activist and organizing spaces – because I have friends who are elders – I have access to people who’ve been through it before. They know the backstory; they know what worked last time and what didn’t; they know who to talk to and they can introduce me. They know the editor. They know the county commissioner. They’ll be at the Tribal storyteller’s house next Tuesday and they can ask her then.

Because I have friends who are elders, I have become more skillful at going to hard places and offering compassion. I can ask without fear, What has it been like to be diagnosed with Alzheimers? How are you holding up? And I can say, You sound like you’re ready to be done with this life. People who are facing serious illness or who are very old or dying need loved ones who are willing to turn toward those experiences alongside them.

Because I have friends who are elders, I no longer imagine they are very different from myself. I recognize that aging catches us all by surprise, but I also have a better idea of what to expect for myself, as well as how to support the people in my communities as they age.

Finally, because I have friends who are elders, I am actively modeling for the kids in my life that intergenerational friendships are normal and great. While it may not be common for youngers and elders to be friends today, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Simply by choosing to live differently, we can redirect the course of history and help our communities chart a new and better path to the future. Regardless of whether we have kids of our own, demonstrating love and affection for our elders is also a gift we give to future generations.

Because I was fortunate enough to serve as caretaker for my Grandma Jean in my late 20s, I’ve been befriending my elders for almost two decades, and I can attest: it’s worth it. Let me outline some things I’ve learned.

Talk to Your Elders Like You Would to Anyone Else. Here’s how I know when I’m perceiving my elders as unlike me: I change how I talk. I select different subjects – maybe trying to seem a little more serious or a little more dignified or a little more proper with my elders. I make fewer jokes, I avoid slang, and I definitely don’t swear. I imagine I shouldn’t talk about popular culture and I definitely shouldn’t say or ask anything about romantic relationships. When I’m perceiving elders (or anyone) as not like me, I put on my Nice Young Woman persona and hide whole chunks of who I am and how I talk and what I think about.