Seventy is the New Seventy | Healthy Aging Series: Season 13, Chapter 2

We received a phone call around 5:00 a.m. that Mom and Dad were missing. A tornado had completely flattened their trailer park community in Warrick County, just outside Evansville.

On our drive over through southern Indiana, we received updates. The first update was that they had found Mom under the rubble of her mobile home. Her face was black and blue, but otherwise she was stable and doing OK. No broken bones.

The second update was that Dad had been found sitting in a cornfield and was now being treated in a local emergency room. No broken bones, but he had a wicked gash on the bottom of his foot.

They were on the local news as the elderly couple who thought they had lost each other and finally joined up in the same hospital room. Bill O’Reilly interviewed them on his show, and I remember seeing Dad, the stoic Northern European man that he was, welling up and being tearful throughout the interview when he thought about how he had almost lost his Betty Louise. It was sweet.

I remember going to their hospital room and telling them that I would replace their cell phone, which, to this day, is probably still out in that cornfield somewhere. Dad’s response was, “Kimberly—that’s what they called me—I want my own cell phone.” So, he wanted one for himself and one for Mom. Two cell phones. They were almost always together.

“Dad,” I said, “I mean, do you have a girlfriend or something that you don’t want Mom to know about?”

He said, “I want two things when I get out of here. I want my own cell phone, and I want my own remote control to the TV.”

So maybe things weren’t as rosy as the O’Reilly interview implied.

Dad died three years later. Mom followed seven years after that. Mom moved into a senior living apartment, and during those last years we would visit, talk about life, and talk about Dad.

A year or two before her death, we were talking about getting older. “There isn’t any age that I would rather be than the age that I am right now!” she declared.

Despite her losses, despite the trauma, despite her frailties—she fell twice during her last two years—she was happy. She was aging successfully. I think that’s what we all want: to age successfully. To be happy when we get old.

Here’s what Mom taught me about getting older:

Successful aging results from a certain frame of mind. Simply put, it happens not because you avoided the challenges of getting older—no one ever does—but because of the attitude you have about the aging process. It happens when you embrace the age you are right now.

I tell anyone that will listen that you have to prepare for the last ten years of your life and that is because those are likely going to be the most difficult years of your life.

There are many ways to prepare for those years, but it seems to me that one of the most important ways is nurturing a positive attitude about aging.

This is a very personal matter. It doesn’t matter what society thinks about the elderly. It doesn’t matter what your family thinks about you as you enter into that phase of life that aging specialists call old-old. What matters, as you get older is what you think about getting older.

If there is anything that will rob you of the joy of getting older, it’s having a bad attitude.

I love that scene in the movie Blues Brothers where Sister Mary Stigmata is scolding Jake and Elwood. “You are such a disappointing pair,” she states and attributes that pronouncement, in part, to their bad attitudes.

Sister Mary understood something that Jake and Elwood had apparently forgotten. A bad attitude can get in the way of a good life. And that includes growing older.

How does one overcome a bad attitude about getting older? Much like the Blues Brothers, you need to make it your mission.

Of course, I’m being a little facetious, but hop in your car with your full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, sunglasses on, and strike out on your mission to claim a good attitude about getting older.

Here are some things that I’ve done to have a better attitude:

1. I stopped romanticizing the past and started anticipating the future.

I began anticipating it the way I look forward to a new TV series, date night, or a trip into the mountains.

When people who know me comment that I don’t seem seventy. I suspect they’re responding less to how I look and more to how I approach life. I’m grounded in the present, with a hopeful anticipation about the future.

2. Next, I started hanging out with people with good attitudes and I avoided people infected with cynicism.

I had dinner at my sister-in-law’s this past weekend. She invited my wife and me and a couple of her photography friends for white chili.

What impressed me about the company was their attitudes about getting older. One was in her seventies and the other in his sixties. We talked some about photography, some about health issues, and mostly about life.

We were infecting each other with our positive attitudes.

3. Finally, I started telling people about the positive things in my life.

Through the years, I’ve told people that there isn’t any other age that I would rather be than the age I am right now.

Each time I tell someone how good my life is, I’m reinforcing the way I think about getting older. Our brains have a remarkable capacity to change throughout our lives. It’s called neuroplasticity. What fires together wires together.

What you practice grows stronger is another way of saying this.

If you want to have a better attitude about getting older, practice having a better attitude about getting older. That’s what I’ve done.

I’ve learned that you can start changing your attitude at any time. Right now.

None of us will have a perfect attitude about aging. I still struggle. I worry about the aging “landmines” I’ll step on. On top of those landmines, the whole world is attempting to infect us with its pessimism and its “younger is better” attitude.

My mom resisted this social pressure. She taught me that despite all the negative effects of aging, getting older can be a positive experience.

I look into the mirror every morning as I get ready for the new day and I see Mom. I am lucky to have had a mother like her. Then, I hear those almost magic words about loving the age you are right now.

I whisper back, “I love being seventy.”