Next week, I am presenting at the second annual conference on Environments for Aging in Tucson, AZ. I have been preparing for this event for a long time…and, yet, it is one of the most difficult for me to do. Aging is personal. It is not something I detach from. Well, I really don’t detach from anything. Rather, I attach in different ways to different experiences I have not personally had. In this case, Dallas and I are aging…trying to keep our sense of humor about it…and we both have had long and profound experiences in walking our parents through to the end of their aging process. That is why this conference has different meaning for me. I just know too much.

Our experiences relive themselves as I develop my presentation on designing for the hearing impaired elder. So many jokes about hearing impairment. So many times we would get frustrated, “Dad, you are not listening!” So many times we would not want to hear the same story for the millionth time, or, so it seemed. Now, we understand and now is too late to redo how it was.

We actually tended to our parents in ways that make us feel good. We just know that had we known what we know now…had we known how the end of the story would play out, we might have responded differently…or we may not have.

I wrote a paper on environment, perception, and aging for my PhD work. It was like this presentation. While academic, on one side, it was also very personal. None of us, if we are fortunate, will get out of this life without getting old. The only way to skip it is to get out early. Seems like a dire alternative to not looking good. And, looking good is relative, isn’t it?

Earlier this month, we went to Detroit to celebrate my harp teacher’s 80th birthday. This was one we were not going to miss. Liz Ilku had survived eight decades and came out wanting a big bash. When I met her, she was 37 and I was 17. She had two babies, had been principal harpist in the Detroit Symphony for 13 years, and was gorgeous and talented…and became my heroine. I had been playing the harp for only three years and had not yet heard anyone thrill me the way she did. That thrill is as alive for me today as it was then.

Then, she began a second career, a real career in healthcare. She had a bad bout of encephaiitis.meningitus, collapsing on tour and taking almost two years to return to her career. Her husband, only a few years later, at the age of 42, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Later in her life, she had two bouts of cancer, dermatamyacitus, took some terrible falls, and began to see her own small body yield to spinal stenosis. Thus, her career as a patient, a survivor, knowing how the Emergency Room feels, how recovering from Chemo feels, how being on steroids for five years feels. This was the second career that she did not count on.

That is why we had to be a this party. And, that is why, when all is said and done, if we are fortunate, we will live long enough to struggle with out hearing, walk slower, joke about the meaning of “Depends,” and be grateful that we are still around to play our the last chapters of our lives.

By the way, n the middle, on her 70th birthday…after the first bout of cancer and her two falls, she recorded her first CD: A jazz CD. We flew out for the CD release concerts…for the same reason that we came to this party. How could we miss it?

March is spring…and the budding trees can bloom again. Clearly, the older the tree, the more blooms to have, and the more we become bonded to what they bring us each year. That is what I hope. That as we each get older, our blooms are counted on by others…and the winters of life pass and we each look forward to Spring again.