Tag Archives: elders

Losing our elders

The Handel Seminar Continues, ,

Handel blog 13*

Remember me when I am gone away
Gone far away into the silent land
When you can no more hold me by the hand.

~Christina Rossetti

From Katherine:  Each day of this pandemic brings more and more losses of older Americans, especially those living in nursing homes.  You can read some discussion of the statistics here.  Most heartbreaking, in many ways, are the deaths that occur with no friends or family there to say goodbye, no loving hand to hold, no one to respond to the eyes that say, “I love you. Remember me.” That line from Christina Rossetti’s poem has always tugged at my heart.  I remember some of our discussion of the anguish Handel felt when his mother died and he was unable to be there or even to attend her funeral.

Chapter in which we learn Handel’s mother has died in Halle

From Peter:  Yes, I have seen a couple of recent articles lamenting exactly that—the sadness that comes with not being able to see a dying friend or relative.  I’ll share this one and this one.  I know such distressing stories will be the subject of valuable collections in many newspapers and museums across the country.  Such a sad way to be remembered.   We need to have more than just cold offices holding death records.

From Rebecca:  Museums, archives. local history centers, maybe even personal diaries—these will all serve to preserve the stories of people taken during this pandemic.  Perhaps we will learn something from their reports.  Perhaps we will know how to respond more quickly and believe those who warn us of dangers that come when we send away the watchdogs.  How many could we have saved if we had listened to our doctors and researchers earlier?

From Katherine:  I expect we will hear many more stories of the vulnerable who succumb as well as those who have risked infection on a daily basis—the nurses, doctors, grocers, delivery people, trash haulers, and cashiers.  On a more positive note, perhaps we will finally pay people a living wage and offer them universal health care.  Perhaps something good will come from this time of loss.  Good things did follow the Plague years in Europe.  Handel gained much from being a part of the great push to rebuild and renew after Halle’s many deaths.  May we garner some good, and may the sad losses end soon.  Let us think of some promising signs for our next exchange.  I need some emotional sunshine.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

Knowing and keeping our parents, grandparents, and nursing home residents

Always a Folklorist, , ,

From Forella:  I have asked Angela to write out and post this message, but these are my thoughts, as will no doubt be apparent.  Angela told me of the death of the songwriter John Prine.  My era of music was a little before his, but I know Ross has always loved his songs.  I do remember one song of his that always made me just sob every time I heard it—Hello in There.  As I have become more and more isolated—both because of my fading vision and especially from the social distancing to combat this coronavirus, the message of that song has haunted me.  We need to look into those “hollow ancient eyes” and greet and love the individuals behind those eyes.  We need to know them, love them, keep them in our hearts—there IS room in our hearts for each of them.  I talked with Katherine, and I think we have devised a way to help with that—a way to hearten and keep our elders—people like me, a way to touch, to clasp at least some of them to our hearts and always remember.

From Katherine:  Thanks, Forella.  Like you, I remember just stopping everything and crying my eyes out when I first heard Prine’s song Hello in There.  My clearest memory is of Joan Baez singing it.  It was so very moving.  So, after you and I talked by phone, I contacted a former colleague of mine, Sandra Dolby, another folklorist who had studied personal narratives, stories people tell from their own lives. I asked her if she had any suggestions on how to reach older people who are now so threatened by this virus.  Here is what she wrote back to me.

Katherine, I will be happy to pass along a prototype of an interview questionnaire that I have used in one form or another with classes at IU but also with other groups that want to collect personal experience stories and reminiscences from older individuals.  Please feel free to adapt it in whatever way seems best for your purposes.  But let me say this about our current situation:  Because we are all “sheltering in place,” now is an ideal time to record electronically this kind of interview over many days, with as many people as possible.  And while I do think it would be a good project for young people, my own suggestion is that the many healthy Generation Xers and Millenials out there use this as an opportunity to actually know and keep alive in your memory the people who are your parents and grandparents.  There is so much of the memory, skill, tradition, and wisdom that is lost whenever anyone dies.  It is hard to accept that this might happen within your own family, but we are seeing that it could.  And you who are adults yourselves can be the good fieldworkers who ask the kind of questions and show the kind of interest that will allow your elders to reveal who they are and what they know to another caring adult.  It will be a treasure for them.  Believe me. Here is a pdf of the questionnaire prototype:

Elder-questionnaireDownload

From Rayette:  Thank you for getting this for us, Katherine.  I will share it with my daughters and with my brother’s children.  You are right.  We are now the generation that may well disappear in a flash.  They need to ask us about our lives.  I hadn’t really thought of that. Fortunately I can still ask some of these questions of my own parents, but I worry because they are in assisted living, and there have been people there who have come down with the virus.  The old people rarely recover.  It is a very difficult time.

From Ross:  John Prine’s death is a deep wound.  This is a harsh time.  Mom I will ask Angela to help record our conversation as I ask you some of these questions.  And since I have no kids, maybe Angela can help do the reverse.  You may learn things about me you never wanted to know. 

From Katherine:  I think that is the point.  We should all welcome the opportunity to share our experience of being a human on this planet before we leave and no longer have that option.  The kind of intimacy that comes with personal narratives—that is the saving grace of our human species.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.