NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- My mother turned 90 on Sunday, Jan. 20. It was a time for celebration and thankfulness.
Photos for Headline Surfer / Eldest daughter Ellen Darden with her 90-year-old mother, Rae Delfosse, as shown in the far left left, with sisters, Terry Osborne, Lorry Delfosse and Suzy Wilnau.
Not only do I still have a mother, but I have one who is more vibrant, active and engaged than many people I know who are half her age. Her wit and intellect are sharper than ever. She is a working artist who shows and sells her work. She is beautiful and bright, not just “for her age,” but by all measures.
Her four adult daughters and their husbands along with most of her grandchildren and some very special longtime family friends gathered to honor her on this special day. She had always planned that she would be in Paris, France, for her 90th birthday, but issues both personal and global intervened.
Long distance travel today is difficult for even the strongest and most intrepid. As loving daughters, we recreated Paris as best as we could in a French restaurant and at her home. She loved our musical rendition of “C’est Manifique,” rewritten in her honor. It was a special day to be savored and remembered by all in attendance.
Mom’s birthday also got me to thinking about age in our society and how we approach it from a cultural and policy prospective. Culturally, at least superficially, our society is all about young people. Advertising, entertainment, fashion, technology, design and more are directed at the latest interests and trends in the youth culture. The opinions and ideas, usually shallow and utopian, of teenagers, young adults, and most nauseatingly, young celebrities who live in a bubble of privilege, are gushed over in the media as if they were brilliant revelations and essential guiding principles.
Mom’s birthday also got me to thinking about age in our society and how we approach it from a cultural and policy prospective. Culturally, at least superficially, our society is all about young people. Advertising, entertainment, fashion, technology, design and more are directed at the latest interests and trends in the youth culture. The opinions and ideas, usually shallow and utopian, of teenagers, young adults, and most nauseatingly, young celebrities who live in a bubble of privilege, are gushed over in the media as if they were brilliant revelations and essential guiding principles.
Youthful beauty is the standard, and incredible amounts of resources are expended by the aging to hang on to it as long as possible. Aging gracefully is no longer the goal; live embalmment is. Today’s plastic surgeons are financially doing quite well as a result.
However, the hard-earned, experienced-based understandings and beliefs of our elders are often not considered as policy is developed. Old-fashioned is definitely a pejorative term.
Unlike many other cultures, we in the United States do not, as a rule, value the wisdom and knowledge accumulated over a lifetime as true wealth that is worthy of extraordinary respect and attention. On the other hand, there exists a huge dichotomy, and it is growing larger with every day.
Because of feckless and reckless practices of our federal government since the advent of Social Security and Medicare -- programs adopted to help ensure a decent quality of life for retirees -- we now face a massive fiscal crisis that will likely be charged to the accounts of generations to come.
How do we bring this all into balance in a way that respects and protects our eldest citizens who were forced to pay for these programs with lifelong assurances that they would be there for them at retirement without destroying the opportunities for prosperity of next generations?
I myself am getting up there in years, and I admit to an expectation of the societal policy/monetary protections for which I’ve been – without my permission – paying for my entire working life. To me, Social Security is not a welfare program, nor is Medicare.
I’ve been forced to pay for these “retirement benefits” my whole life, and now I want what was promised. By government mandate, it was made a part of my planning for retirement. And yet, I recognize the dismal situation that our Federal government has gotten us into by, again, feckless and reckless mismanagement of all of the monies confiscated from our collective paychecks since the programs were put in place.
Who pays the piper?
Then add to the mix lobbying organizations like the AARP (originally the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons), who battle constantly for a larger piece of the national monetary pie going to senior citizens. Older citizens are being forced into an adversarial position with the young.
This is a generational dilemma that I do not trust our Federal government or our people and their elected representatives to be able to deal with in any sort of responsible manner. The recent national election outcomes expand my lack of trust. More than half of our population showed themselves as oblivious to this dilemma and/or uninterested in solving it.
The current administration, which spends 40% more per day than its generated revenue, was retained by voters to steer the Titanic towards the looming iceberg. The implementation of “ObamaCare” and its projected effects on both the elderly and youth add another dimension to the dilemma.
How, as a culture and a nation, do we respect and protect the wisdom and value of our older population and honor promises made, pander to the youth culture and at the same time ensure that those coming behind us have a fair shot at a decent future? All I know is I’m not yet old and wise enough to come up with the solution(s) to this existential/fiscal mess into which our nation and our people have plunged. I wish I were.
How, as a culture and a nation, do we respect and protect the wisdom and value of our older population and honor promises made, pander to the youth culture and at the same time ensure that those coming behind us have a fair shot at a decent future? All I know is I’m not yet old and wise enough to come up with the solution(s) to this existential/fiscal mess into which our nation and our people have plunged. I wish I were.
My mom will be fine. Her children will probably be OK. I’m worried about her grandchildren and mine. What will their lives be like if they ever make it to 90?