Easter Sunday this year was, for me, a time full of senior moments. No, by that term I don’t mean forgetting but, on the contrary, I mean remembering. For months I have been on a one-man campaign to substitute a positive meaning for the negative phrase that so many people have accepted. In my book, senior moments are times to cherish, not to regret.

These are events, people, and places from the remembered past that continue to provide us with psychic value. This remembrance of things past enriches our lives and make us appreciate the worth of our human experience. Remembering in this way enhances our present lives and reaches forward to give greater value to our future.

On Easter morning I drove to Weston, there to visit some of my old Jesuit colleagues. The expression “old colleagues” evokes three things for me: the number of years they have lived; my being no longer a member of their religious community; and the affection I feel for them.

Though almost 30 years have passed since I left the Jesuits, they  receive me as if I still belonged to them. And, in a sense, I do. We share a history of lived experiences that remain fresh even after the passage of so many years. Over lunch at the Campion Residence, my old Jesuit friends and I laughed about events that happened long ago and still retain power to entertain us and remind us of the bonds that hold us together.

With one of my tablemates, I felt a special tie. Paul Lucey, now 87 years old, was my teacher, 50 years ago, when he was professor of metaphysics at the then Weston College. He gave me an appreciation of the fundamental concept of being that has stayed with me through the years. Scholasticism, the philosophical system that we studied, has largely faded, but some of its basic insights have retained their value, thanks to teaching like his. If I have cultivated and retained a sense of wonder, it is in part due to him.

On a less elevated level we swapped stories of Jesuit characters we had known. One, “Foggy” MacKinnon, a scholar famous for his absentmindedness, was alleged one time to have driven an automobile from Boston  to a convention in Chicago and then to have forgotten the car and returned back home by airplane, a story all my Jesuit friends swear is true.

We also recalled one of Father Lucey’s fellow faculty members, Joseph Shea. His deadly pedagogical practice was to read, year after year, from the textbook he had written. At the bottom of a certain page of this book, students long before had written the Latin sentence “Hic stat P. Shea,” (This is where Father Shea stands up.) Such was his spontaneity that every year he could be relied on to rise at this exact point in the text. And he did in my year. He never did understand why his students all laughed then.

In the course of our conversation, Paul Lucey observed the positive feelings that leavers like me have about their old religious family. That remains true of me because I feel grateful to the Jesuits for all the values, spiritual and human, that they shared with me. My having left almost 30 years ago does not negate those precious experiences witnessed to by my senior moments.

Many of the Jesuits whom I saw on Easter reside in the assisted living or health center sections of Campion. Many of them suffer serious disabilities that have brought to an end their professional work in ministry. One of them, Daniel Lewis, had been teaching at Boston College High School last fall until a crippling illness required him to leave the school. I enjoyed sitting with Father Lewis and recalling some of the experiences we had shared, especially during the year 1964-65 that we spent together studying in Belgium.

Nothing here should be taken to sentimentalize the experience of  the Jesuits in old age. I often felt shocked to see the ravages of disease on men I had known when they were young. I know myself ultimately not exempt from these ravages –  – it’s just that my time has not yet come. In my mind’s eye I could see these former colleagues as they looked decades ago and the contrast assailed whatever complacency I might have harbored.

The Jesuits long ago developed a graceful and meaningful way of describing the retirement of their members. The official catalogue that lists the Jesuits of the United States, some 3500 in all, has a special designation for the work of those who live in retirement. They are described as “praying for the Church and the Society.” Thus their continued existence, no matter the level of their bodily or mental disability, is recognized as of value to their religious family.

Richard Griffin

Americans are famous for believing in self-help books. Starting with Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac of 1733, we have been publishing and buying them at a great rate ever since. Walk into a bookstore and you will find shelves full of advice adapted to every stage and condition of life.

Self-help, however, turns out to be something of a misnomer. Actually, it’s other people wanting to help you. All sorts of people are ready with counsel, flying in the face of mankind’s almost universal experience: no one really welcomes advice from anyone else about how they should live their own life.

And yet the books sell. Can one suspect the lurking presence of masochism, self-torture, which drives us to heed the imperatives that figure largely in such volumes? Something in us, after all, wants to be told what to do.  

But is there not often something patronizing about advising people who have reached 80, 90, or 100 on the subject of how to live? If they have been successful enough at this kind of longevity, perhaps they have been doing something right.

Al Franken, a leading comedian on the current scene, has also got into the act. But he, at least, has fixed his tongue firmly in his cheek. Most recently, he has authored “Oh, the Things I know!: A Guide To Success Or, Failing That, Happiness,” a 2002 book, newly in paperback, that satirizes the self-help genre.

I confess mixed feelings about “100 Tips For Healthy Aging,” a new manual from the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center For Aged, just published in celebration of its 100th birthday. The tips are more than the word suggests. They all begin with imperative verbs, driven words such as “Get” (8 mentions), “Have” (6), and “Protect” (3).

After some 70 years of doing it on my own, do I need to be told “Snack Well?” Or “Wear properly fitting shoes?” Or must those who have them be instructed: “Spend time with your grandchildren or great-grandchildren?”

However, for fear of seeming overly curmudgeonly, let me single out some creative injunctions that do not offend the sensibilities of even purists like me. Here, too, I would prefer exhortation rather than imperatives but these commands have enough merit to make me forgive their style.

“Maintain a sense of humor about life,” the folks at Hebrew Rehab tell us.  In this column, that’s what I am trying to do. As you can see, however, it’s by no means easy to pull off. And isn’t this virtue something you either have or don’t have and will find it impossible to manufacture?

At least, we are not told: “Have a nice day.” To that I might have replied, “Excuse me but I have other plans.”

“Listen to or make music,” they order us.  Bravo!, except they have never heard me play the piano, or, even worse, sing. However, I do believe in listening to the pros and continue to take delight in opera, a dubious habit contracted in my early teenage years.

Under the heading “mental stimulation,” our Hebrew Rehab friends tell us “Keep a journal,” and “Write your memoirs.” Perhaps they should have added a caveat “Take Care Who You Show Them To,” advice that I have been known to violate, to my continuing chagrin.

Another injunction that grabbed my interest is “Pursue spiritual meaning in your life.” Amen, I say, Amen. But I have been running after spiritual meaning for years without having yet caught up with it.

Of course, catching up with spiritual meaning may be worse than pursuing it. As the monk who was rumored to have become enlightened replied when asked how he felt: “Just as miserable as ever.”

Though it belongs in my banal class, the instruction “Wear your seat belt” can at least claim the virtue of simplicity. I need no convincing of its value but, again, must we, who never fail to do it, be told what to do?

This Poor Richard prefers some of the imperatives in Roger Rosenblatt’s 2000 book “Rules For Aging.” For example, he urges: “Do not attempt to improve anyone, especially when you know it will help.” When what Rosenblatt calls the muse of improvement whispers in your ear, he succinctly tells you what to do: “Swat it.”

Now you know what a misanthrope I can be, a guy who can look quizzically at an excellent booklet, full of prudent advice, much of it based on solid research, and tested by experience. And it comes, to boot, from an institution that enjoys an international reputation for its fine tradition of care.

So “100 Tips” is a brochure that you, a person of sound judgment, may well want to have. It will cost five dollars, plus a shipping and handling charge. You can find out how to get it by calling (617) 363-8385 or by emailing
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.

Richard Griffin

“The older you get, the healthier you have been.” That is the mantra Tom Perls has devised, after almost ten years of studying people who have lived to age 100. Most of these centenarians, it turns out,  have not so much overcome life-threatening diseases as avoided them.

Dr. Perls, a geriatrician and  researcher now at the Boston University Medical Center, last week shared with a small but enthusiastic audience some of the insights he has gained from his dealings with people who have broken the century barrier.

Perls started his medical career believing, like most other doctors, that the older you get, the sicker you are. However, after getting to know two centenarians,  residents at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale,  he began to change his mind.

By now he feels enthusiastic about life in extreme old age. The 800 centenarians he has had contact with thus far have taught him so much that it has affected the way he lives his own life.

He attaches great importance to continuing to learn, especially acquiring  new skills. It’s a way of building cognitive reserve that can protect against decline in brain power. The links between two telephone poles are improved by adding new wires; if we learn a new instrument or a new language, we are, in a sense, adding new wires to our cognitive capabilities.

Dr. Perls also considers nutrition vitally important. And yet he is not a fanatic about food: rather, he believes in achieving and keeping a balance. If restricting your intake of calories is going to make you miserable, it’s not going to be good for you and you will not long keep doing it.

But Perls is dead set against being overweight. He confesses having been in that condition himself until he determined to stop eating two bagels a day along with several chocolate bars each week. He now takes special care to ration the carbohydrates in his diet.

He credits Walter Willet, a prominent researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, with seeing that the famous food pyramid put out by the United States Department of Agriculture should be turned upside down.

Instead of carbohydrates being the largest item, at the base of the pyre, they should be on top. Fruits and vegetables should replace them as the nutrients of choice with carbos being carefully controlled. Fats are not always what they seem: they do not pose the same threat of obesity as do carbos. Carbos make the pancreas produce insulin that stores fat in the body.

Since some 70 percent of Americans are overweight, the importance of these nutrition issues is evident. Besides bad nutrition, another reason for this unhealthy situation is our lack of exercise. Only 15 percent of people over 65 exercise regularly, a factor that lessens chances for increased longevity.

Many of us who do exercise do not realize the importance of strength training, such as stretching arms and legs. Unlike aerobic exercise that boosts endurance, strength exercise aims to build muscles.  Amazingly enough, strength training of this sort can increase one’s brain power. To make sure his patients take it seriously, Dr. Perls writes prescriptions for strength training.

Certain common traits tend to characterize people who have reached 100. “Centenarians tend not to dwell on things,”  says Perls. “Also, they tend to be a gregarious, funny group.” What this means is that they manage stress very well.

A couple of other characteristics run through them as a group. “Religion seems to be quite prevalent among centenarians,” Perls says. Having some form of faith has led them to discover a reason behind things. Prayer seems to reduce stress, especially forms of repetitive prayer like the rosary.

Another trait is having social networks and enjoying other people. “I have come across only two or three curmudgeonly centenarians,”  says this researcher into their ways. Most of them are gregarious and they have the good sense and the ability to bring young people into their lives, people to receive help from them.

Despite his enthusiasm for the centenarians he has known, Tom Perls does not see getting to 100 as some kind of life goal. Rather, he is interested in the quality of life, in extending one’s life to its full span while enjoying good mental and physical health. He supports the “compression of morbidity” ideal, whereby the time when we are seriously ill at the end of life is reduced to the shortest time possible.

As for the so-called anti-aging purveyors who see aging as a sickness and doing away with the limits to life as a goal, he judges them dangerous. “There are  hucksters out there that are doing no different than what the snake oil salesmen of the 1800s were doing.  When they are selling human growth hormone, it’s the same as ground-up goat testicles. Injecting yourself with this stuff is buying yourself an aggressive form of cancer 20 years down the road.”

Richard Griffin

It was my first visit ever to a nursing home where residents are free to go to bed at night at whatever hour they wish and to get up when they feel like doing so.

“We are trying to emphasize a different model, where the residents have control,” says Paul Hollings, director of Neville Manor, an institution in my home town where I stopped to see how that new model works.

Located at Youville Hospital until its new facility near Fresh Pond opens next spring, Neville Manor makes no small claim for historical roots. It traces its remote origins back to 1779 (starting with the city’s poorhouse and allowing for many changes of site and institutional culture.)  

According to Hollings, until recently the mindset for nursing homes went, “I will take care of you; you are dependent on me.” This was not all bad but it led to institutions that were focused much more on the bodies of the people who lived in them than on their overall wellbeing, psychological and spiritual as well as physical.

Neville Manor is by no means the only nursing home that recognizes the right of residents to determine their own bedtimes and to make other decisions about themselves. It is one of a significant minority of institutions across America that have begun to change the culture of nursing homes.

These innovating institutions have drawn inspiration from a group of far-sighted people from around the country. A leader among them is Bill Thomas, a Harvard Medical School-trained physician who has developed the Eden Alternative, an innovative plan for a new approach to nursing homes. I recently heard this charismatic reformer speak in Chicago, where he called for a new view of aging to propel a new kind of facility.

At Neville Manor, an important vehicle for change is the residents’ council. Paul Hollings wants it empowered not so much to address gripes as to solve problems. “We’ve been working actively with the residents to get them to come up with solutions,” says Hollings.

I talked to the three officers of this council and was impressed with their upbeat approach to life at their facility. Knowing that their opinions on important issues count for something, they would seem to experience a higher level of morale than residents of old-style homes.

In a mission statement the cultural change committee at Neville says of applicants: “Their admission to our institution should not require them to sacrifice what made their lives meaningful in order to receive (our) treatment and care.”

Just as members of the staff in their own private lives enjoy the right to make choices such as “what we will eat, what we will do to entertain ourselves, when we will get up and how often and when we will bathe,” so residents should have the same right, so far as possible.

Another principle vital to nursing home change concerns the treatment of staff members. The reformers believe that how management deals with staff determines in large measure how staff deals with residents. When staff members have their own rights and dignity respected, then they are much more likely to treat residents with respect.

At Neville, every staff member expects to answer resident requests for help. If a particular staffer cannot take care of it, he or she will find someone else who can. Regardless of their job title, they are all involved in the common enterprise of meeting the needs of residents.

Normally, however, nursing assistants are assigned to the same small group of residents, thus enabling these staff members to get to know better the people they serve.

I talked with several staff members about the changes in ways of doing things and in atmosphere. A nursing assistant, Mahnaz Akhtar, told me about the improvement in communication among staff members. “When we have a problem, we can talk to each other,” she said.

With her was Rohi Khan who explained how they resolved a problem that resulted from managers at first not talking to the staff members directly involved in a difficult situation. “It worked out really good,” she said of the solution.

Wendy Lustbader, a Seattle-based geriatric social worker and author, calls for creating a homelike environment and promoting a sense of community.

“Dogs, cats, birds, plants, children, and gardens accessible to everyone,” Lustbader writes, “can transform a sterile monoculture into a human habitat worthy of a home.”

A conversation I had with Jenni Caldwell, Ombudsman Program Director at Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services supports what I have written here.

Of Neville Manor and Paul Hollings, she observes: “What is unique is that they welcome finding out about problems so they can change things.”

And speaking at large of nursing homes committed to the new ways, Caldwell says: “Culture change is the most exciting thing that has happened in a long, long time – an idea whose time has come.”  

Richard Griffin