Blessed

How are you doing? I am blessed. This was the standard  reply of Lionel Sandiford, one of the older San Franciscans living alone who helped me with my research. Since he signed a disclaimer, I can reveal his identity.

This morning I attended the memorial for Lionel at the Canon Kip Center of the Episcopal Community downtown San Francisco. Lionel suffered a a stroke after having ridden a bus with pneumonia from Florida because he wanted to die in San Francisco, in his community. He literally left the hospital and jumped on a Greyhound to arrive in San Francisco and then die. I cannot imagine what thoughts went on his mind during the long ride.

Lionel was an inspiration for me and many others. A great and elegant  singer, a fine carpenter, Lionel fought for the rights of other seniors like him. He told me how much he wanted to leave his hotel room in the Tenderloin to have a kitchen where he would invite all his friends. He unwrapped  the fancy china he wanted to use to enjoy the meals with his friends.

He did not manage to move though. Yet, he created a community of friends that replaced the family. His family does not even know that he died since his body has remained unclaimed. Canon Kip did claim his body  and organized a touching memorial where we all sang with full lungs “Oh when the saints, go marching in, oh when Lionel marches in..” It was deeply moving. Other African American men and James Chionsini and I reiterated the importance to use the effort of Lionel as a springboard for claiming the rights of low-income older adults that do not have the luxury of an apartment in a city with very little affordable housing.

Dear Lionel, your immense spirit and wonderful voice will always be with us.  We are blessed that we met you.

Article on him: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/06/9996/ucsf-researcher-challenges-myth-elderly-independence

Zany Indeed ==> Psichiatria Democratica in Berkeley

Zany Indeed ==> Psichiatria Democratica in Berkeley.

Guts

As soon as I sit next to my friend Joanne, she says about her 80-year old mother who lives alone in the East Coast: “She fell in the kitchen, in the morning, just like that.” Then Joanne adds, “”I have to decide what to do with her”. A few days after, I sit in the car with Mario, another close friend with a 90-year-old mother who was recently found lying on the floor, alive, after she fainted. Mario was doing his best to decide what was the best solution for her. I felt uncomfortable with both of my friends. It seems to me that they were giving for granted that they knew better. I asked to both of them: “What do you think your mother desires?” Their replies were elusive. Then I read the title of this article in the Wall Street Journal: “Can Dad Still Live Alone?” Well, I asked to myself, who decides? How is the decision made? Who has more power, and why?

When I spent time with 47 San Franciscans over 75 living alone, a lack of connection with adult children often transpired from their stories.

Maybe a third party should be involved in mediating between parents living alone and adult children who know better. Maybe adult children need to make an extra effort, even in challenging situations, to understand what their parents truly wish.

Sometimes the most difficult decisions are those that bring us closer to our beloved ones. In Patrimony: A True Story, writer Philip Roth describes the pain to decide to let his father die in hospital. The writer decides to respect his father’s will rather than his wish to keep him alive longer. Yes, sometimes listening to others takes plenty of guts.

Philip Roth

Surprise

It is that time of the year where we are supposed to spend time with our family and friends, be cheerful, exchange presents, and feel connected. At a time when the expectations for company are inflated by cultural norms, then it is easier to feel lonely. What is loneliness? A deficit between expected and real connections.  When we live alone, have a family far away or missing, then it is easy to feel lonely in these days. For example this year I decided not go to Italy, and I admit that I miss not seeing my mother and my two brothers.

I am also very lucky because I have close friends in the Bay Area, so I will spend Christmas with a fabolous friend, we are going to have a “Christmas adventure”,  “un avventura  natalizia,” and I look forward to that. Before doing that, I will visit an older woman I met during my research. She is in her 80s, lives alone, has no friends and no family members.  She is excited for my visit and I feel great to bring some cheer to her apartment.

Please remember that for many  adults living alone –  more or less old, this is not an easy time. We often hide our longing for company since we are so used to spend time on our own. Sometimes a phone call, a card, or a small surprise makes all the difference in the world. If you need a place to start and you are in the US, you can contact organizations such as Little Brother Friends of the Elderly, the friendly companion program of Meals on Wheels, or any local organization. When I was living in London I asked to my parish, and they put me in touch with Dora, a feisty woman living alone nearby. She was a blast!

Vigor and more

Last Friday, as I was driving back to Berkeley from San Francisco, my eye caught sight of a new billboard soon after the Bay Bridge. It read something like: “Longevity is increasing rapidly. Save vigorously”. Yours truly, Bank of America, if I remember well.

What is the message behind??

It is pretty easy and pervasive: it is up to us to make sure that we have enough money when we retire. By now, we have a good idea that we may live to a 100 and more, so we need to save “vigorously”, as much as we diet and exercise. The other subtler message behind is that our destiny is up to our diligence and perspicacity. We are in it alone. Even more, the assumption is that everyone can and should save money.

Missing is the scenario that some of us may not be able to save money because too pressed to make ends meet at the end of the month or that we had an employer that did not give us a retirement plan, or we were not employed because we were raising children or caregiving someone. There is much much more to that simplistic and frankly dangerous idea that all we have to do is save with all our forces. Needless to say, those living alone often struggle more to make ends meet. UCLA published a great report on that two years ago. Also, older solo dwellers may have less savings in their older age than those living with others because of the expenses that come with managing an household alone. So, when we see ads like that (there are millions along those lines), let’s raise our critical antennae and see what lurks behind.

Loneliness and living alone: an odd couple (finally)

It is easy to assume that living alone comes with loneliness. Well, this assumption is finally losing its hold thanks to a number of studies and more awareness on those two experiences. Time magazines just released a short article on the argument that dementia may be more linked to loneliness rather than to the living arrangement of living solo. Yes, we can feel VERY lonely when we are surrounded by others.  Link to the article

Street Spirit!

I am sitting on a chair in front of a supermarket, the Berkeley Bowl, with a bundle of Street Spirit, the newspaper that homeless sell for $1. What happened?

No, I have not become homeless – at least not yet. One month ago I asked to Frank E. Moore, the man usually selling the papers, to go inside the store to buy me a Japanese take-away because I badly strained a muscle under my foot, so I was trying to walk as less as possible.

The other part of the story is that I was trying to change my attitude and feel comfortable with asking for help. I wanted to walk the talk with what I am arguing with my research. In a paper I criticized the promotion of independent living for the pressures that it created among older adults living alone. And here I am, the first week of November, living alone, badly able to walk, and hiding or minimizing my condition to my friends! For one week I just relied on Safeway deliveries and my good friend Andrea, who is very busy though.

The second week I started to feel uncomfortable with my I-can-do-it-alone stand, so I opened up. I apologized to my friend Joe to whom I did not share my condition. As a result, he drove me to the hairdresser, and we had a great meal afterwards. I also started asking for help, and it felt great and fun. The man who sells Street Spirit was very happy to have an excuse to enter into the supermarket where he is banned to step in. I even went through the experience of taking a plane using wheel chair services. I did not imagine that using the free wheel chair services at SFO meant to go on a fast-track, and having a series of charming men taking bags for me, waiting for me outside the airplane, and looking after me.

I am aware that asking for help is much easier for me than for a woman in her 80s living alone. Why? Because she may be afraid to give out cues that show that she may be unable to look after herself, a sign that may lead caregivers or neighbors to push her into a nursing home. So it is not enough to change attitude and be more open, as in my case. Also, she may have a chronic condition, so she may be afraid to appear as a burden, while my strain healed after a few weeks. We need to create a much more nurturing environment for older adults living alone to be genuinely able to ask for help.

Whole picture

The body of 66-year old David Maxwell was found today post hurricane Sandy. Before the hurricane, a neighbor knocked at the door and he did not reply, so everyone thought that he was gone. The same neighbor commented “He thought the storm wasn’t going to be as bad as it was. He underestimated it. And this is what happened to him.” But there is more to the story.

Most stories tend to blame victims for their carelessness, negligence, or lack of sight. Since in the western world is so important to count on our own forces, the emphasis is on our own action, or lack of action.

Reading beyond these lines, I learn that David was rather isolated, and that his partner, a man, was institutionalized in a nursing home. So David was either gay or bisexual. And he was a former member of the military forces. I can also assume that maybe the neighborhood was not the most liberal. Who knows…

Perhaps higher and intangible forces led him not to answer the knock – heterosexism, ageism…Maybe a luck of trust with the world around him. Or maybe he did not hear the knock because of some impairment or a fall. It is impossible to say at this point. What matters is that we move beyond the easy and trite stories of blaming someone for his actions and look at the whole picture, as much as we can.

Story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231499/Hurricane-Sandy-death-toll-66-year-old-living-dead-weeks-storm-hit-raising-number-42.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Read more: 

“If we can’t afford to live here, there is no city.”

 Go Gray Panthers! The last newsletter of the San Francisco Gray Panthers had an illuminating section entitled “Housing is a Right.” Yes, housing is a right in paper. However, as I documented in my dissertation, it is harder and harder to afford a one-bedroom in cities like San Francisco. It is so hard that one better attend a “Senior Survival School” where activist teach how to fight notices of evictions of landlords that want to get rid of old tenants. What is the problem? The rent of the old solo dweller may not rise dramatically thanks to a policy called “rent control”. Another hurdle that older solo dweller find is that getting subsidized rent under Section 8 is extremely hard to get. These are just two examples.

Hopefully I will soon publish an article with most of my findings.

The great piece written by the Gray Panthers is below, a lot of food for thought….

HOUSING IS A RIGHT —–

Governments exist, by the consent of the people, to facilitate and provide for the people’s basic needs—food, healthcare and housing. In our city, housing is becoming something only for the wealthy. Realtors view hi-tech companies minting millionaires as a pool of eager buyers. If these millionaires can’t find a multi-million dollar Victo- rian, they can wait for proposed multi-million dollar condos like the 134 unit 8 Washington. Pacific Waterfront Partners expect to make $470 million from this high-rise.

More Give-Aways: The city gave private developer Hines of Houston the right to build a 1070-foot high-rise, the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast, on our public land set aside for the new Transbay Terminal. Low-income people will be priced out of their South of Market neighborhood as property values are expected to rise by nearly $4 billion! And what will be the impact on residents and transportation of the proposed arena to lure the Warriors basketball team to SF? All supervisors supported this one and waived the city’s competitive bidding requirements so developers can take over Piers 30-32 and seawall 330.

The amount of SF affordable housing last year fell by 63%. Rental prices have climbed 26% since last December. Of the 12,330 housing units completed through 2011, only 37% were affordable. ABAG (Assoc. of Bay Area Govern- ments) states that we need 31,200 new units by 2014, 60% to be affordable. Mayor Lee’s affordable housing fund calls for 9,000 units only. The devil is in the details of the Lee plan, one of which has already surfaced: developers can reduce by 20% how much on-site affordable housing they must build. Meaning they can throw up units unaffordable to most of us in a “desirable area” and shuffle off most “affordable units” elsewhere. Studies cite an income of $50-70 thousand yearly to live in SF. Those “greedy city retirees’” average income is $30,000, and the majority fall below that. As one Western Addition resident said about gentrification, “If we can’t afford to live here, there is no city.”

Mix of loneliness, heart disease, and living alone

In the last two weeks many articles discussed the link between living alone and heart disease as well as living alone and loneliness. The discussions stemmed from the publication of two articles in the Archives of Internal Medicines. Skimming through the articles, I found that some journalists mixed the findings and concluded that yes, living alone leads to loneliness and heart disease and that living alone in older age is dangerous.

If we go at the source, the message is different.

The article on loneliness by the team of Carla Perissinotto at UCSF simply states that loneliness is “a predictor of functional decline and death,” in order words, your heath is not likely to improve if you feel lonely. In her sample of 1604 older adults only 18% lived alone, less than the national percentage of 30%. This study is useful simply to underscore that loneliness is not healthy. Let’s also remember that those living with others are often more likely to feel lonely compared to solo dwellers. This is one of the main arguments of Klinenenberg’s Going Solo. I agree with this argument since I often heard from Klinenberg’s informants that they felt lonelier when living with someone else as I spent time with them as research assistant. Other studies cogently argued that adolescents and young adults tend to feel lonely more often that older adults. So loneliness is not confined to older adults and older solo dwellers.

In the second article, the investigators – Udell et al. -used an international sample of 44,573 participants, 19% living alone. They concluded that “living alone was associated with increased mortality among all but the most elderly patients.” Older adults living alone were not as likely than other adults living alone to die of heart disease. Again, this is very interesting, but let’s not forget that it is really hard to draw any conclusion. So many factors may influence this finding. It would be very interesting to review the numbers by country. My sense is that social policies (like universal health care versus Medicare) may influence these data. So this is intriguing, but it is only one corner of a much bigger picture.