Editorial

Citation

Iphofen, R. (2013), "Editorial", Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Vol. 14 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/QAOA-09-2013-0027

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Volume 14, Issue 4.

I am allowing myself an indulgence in this last Issue of the Journal that I will be editing. In the era of the “personalisation agenda” I have wanted to deliver a more personal approach to perspectives on ageing than we have allowed for a full issue in the past. So this current indulgence is based on an approach that has informed my own intellectual, professional and, even, therapeutic perspectives throughout my career – put simply it is the connectedness of things.

All too often we separate, isolate, focus and, indeed, literally “analyse” for very sound pragmatic reasons. It is often the only way to guide practice, inform policy making and direct research. We have to narrow our gaze in order to manage the wealth of data available. The inevitable consequent fragmentation sometimes detracts from the essentially holistic nature of human experience. We study the fragments – but “experience” the whole. Nothing could be more important than regaining that holism than when understanding the process of ageing.

I can illustrate with some of my own experiences. When, as a medical sociologist I took up a post teaching health professionals in the early 1990s my father-in-law, Fred, was in the later stages of terminal cancer. I had only been in post a few days when I visited him in hospital to hear from his doctors the unfavourable prognosis. His comment was: “Well, Ron, this will be very useful for your teaching won’t it?” One could see this as an attempt to distance himself from the realisation of his own demise, or an almost sanguine reflection on one of the many ironies of human existence. Fred was one of my heroes.

Another was the Reverend Michael Mayne, one time Dean of Westminster and who officiated at the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. I interviewed him in 1974 when he was Head of Religious Broadcasting (Radio) for the BBC. I found him to be a humble, insightful and kind man – even then to me as a novice researcher. His first question: “Why are you interested in me?”. He provoked many profound thoughts in me then, but lately I came across the books he wrote reflecting upon his serious illnesses and my admiration for him was rekindled.

It takes some courage and endurance to communicate the experience of terminal illness for the benefit of others and he managed just that:

Medical science is inevitably only concerned with what is, not what ought to be. […] In an ideal NHS it would be good if every doctor and nurse in training would reflect on the mystery of the human being with both the learning of the scientist and the observation and sympathy of the novelist or the poet. […] Medical scientists […] are searching for mechanisms that are much more complex than any simple dichotomy between mind and body. […] there must be a new readiness to communicate between the professions; between the arts and the sciences; between doctors and theologians, professional and lay-person […]. We use one kind of abstract language to describe the mind and another kind of material language to describe the body, languages that fail to connect, and this stops us seeing that these two kinds of phenomena are simply two manifestations of one process, and that mind, body and spirit are one and the same (Mayne, 2006).

One point I wish to make here is that ageing is most certainly not something we need be defeatist about. My wife has champions too and she often holds up Scott and Helen Nearing as people to emulate. They were part of a “back-to-the-land” movement that became the source of the “Good Life” idea. They remained radical and self-sufficient all their lives despite the challenges. They built their own houses – the last when Scott was in his 80s – and he only died at the age of 104 when he feared getting just too old to collect the wood for the fire any more and becoming too much of a burden for his 80-year-old wife or any formal care agency. He chose then not to eat and died within a fortnight. His wife Helen died in her 90s, in a car accident – incidentally not caused by her.

I asked the contributors to this Issue to offer their personal insights into the experience of ageing. It opens with a full piece from Judith Tydings who has combined autobiography with the study of ethnography to give us an engaging article about how she attained the pinnacle of her academic career in the achievement of a doctorate at the age of 74. It is a distinctly North American perspective which has resonance with the experiences of women within her age cohort across many western societies.

During my first full-time teaching post, in an Adult Residential College, one of my students told me his mother had grown interested in what he was doing and wondered if she too could apply to the college. He was 40 years old so I figured she must be fairly “mature”. She did indeed apply and was accepted at the age of 64. She went on to attain a degree in social policy from Edinburgh University and later took up employment running a care home. It was only in her later 70s she decided she had “proven” something to herself and could then enjoy a leisurely retirement as she later told me – to look after her pet cat.

Not long after my own retirement from my university post, my wife and I were able to move to France to live. My brother-in-law who had emigrated to Australia nearly 30 years earlier commented on “how brave” we were to take such a step “at our age”. We honestly had never thought that it took courage – it was an “adventure” we wished to try and “age” did not come into it. Hence when we met up with some “old” friends who had moved to France some years before – Meg Brook and David Rowlands – I asked them to write about their own rationale for the move. They are now in their early 70s and you can see from David's article that this adventure has revitalised them and exercises their abilities in many ways. Learning a new language is only one mental exercise involved – joining a different cultural community can be a challenge at any age – Meg and David show how positive an experience one can make it especially in later life.

In a similar positive vein Ileana Barcanescu has written about what it is like to move from a position as a chemical engineer in the nuclear industry in a former communist state, Romania, to taking over the family farm. So more than a lifestyle change, that represents a later life career change. Anthea Tinker and Anne Jamieson wrote about what led them into gerontology in the first place and serendipity is clearly key to the directions they took. Both are “retired” but as with many older professionals, particularly academics, they continue their scholarly pursuits as well as still guiding and advising others.

I asked both Gill Pringle and Annie Stevenson to write more personally about dealing with ageing relatives and we are privileged to share the more intimate thoughts of experienced “care professionals” with lengthy careers in social services. I have also written about caring for a loved one with dementia and, as with one or two of the previous articles, is intended to illustrate that, no matter how professional, experienced and knowledgeable one is expected to be, the care of older relatives can raise challenges one can never be fully prepared for. We have no space for that piece in this Issue but I am hoping it will appear soon in 2014.

Reference

Mayne, M. (2006), The Enduring Melody, Darton Longman & Todd, London, pp. 237-8