Continuous Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs)
Cultural Specialty Communities
Chapter 16. Stranger in a Strange Land: Moving to a Different Country
Evaluating Criteria for Living Outside the US
NORCs (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities)
Part IV: Ensuring Comfort and Care in Your Oldest Age
Chapter 18. The Trajectory of Aging
Chapter 19. What Will We Need?
Chapter 20. Financing the Care You Need
Chapter 21. Options for Receiving Care
Continuous Care Retirement Community (CCRC)
Chapter 22. Documenting Your Preferences for Care
Power of Attorney for Finances
Finding a Younger Support System
Chapter 23. End-of-Life Choices
A Final Checklist and Guide for Your Planning:
References & Recommended Reading
This book is for you. Don’t say you’re not a Solo Ager. The truth is, we’re all Solo Agers if we live long enough. Successful Solo Agers have learned how to age alone and they have lessons we all need to learn. This book will give you those lessons.
WAIT! Before you put down this page and get into the book, think a bit about what I’ve just said and take it seriously.
I’m a seventy-three-year-old gerontologist who’s moving, by inches, into old age. I wrote a textbook in gerontology, but I learned more from personal example than I ever did from books. I had the great good fortune, with my wife, to spend seven years caring for our dear friend Larry Morris, who moved into our home and later died in our midst at the age of ninety-seven. As Larry approached his nineties, he had outlived two wives and had no children. He was a Solo Ager and his example remains an inspiration to me.
In the classic novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the hero is a man who has spent his life as a humble teacher at a boys’ school. He’s lying on his deathbed when he overhears friends talking about his life, saying it was a pity he never had any children. Mr. Chips pipes up to say “But you’re wrong. I have! Thousands of ’em, thousands of ’em … and all … boys.”
Mr. Chips has spent his life as what we might call an investor in social capital: in the “ties that bind” us together and that make our lives meaningful in the end. Successful Solo Agers are those who have done best at cultivating those ties. That’s the lesson I learned from Larry Morris, who spent so many years of his life giving to others and cultivating friends, including younger friends, like me and my wife.
The Beatles had it down when they sang, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Those lyrics sound like a cliché, but they aren’t. Epidemiologists are now discovering that isolation and loneliness constitute “the new smoking.” The lack of social ties has a devastating impact on mortality and life expectancy. In short, “going it alone” can kill you. Successful Solo Agers are those who are solo only in certain respects. They are the successful investors in social capital, and this book will show you how to learn from what they already know.
So, whether married or single, childless or with children, we all have to ask the question: Can we learn to be an “investor in social capital?” Yes, we can. Sociological theorists like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) can tell you how to do it. As with physical health, when it comes to strengthening social ties, it’s never too late to make up for lost time—and in our overly busy world we all have to struggle against that threat of lost time. Prof. Putnam has warned us about the dangers, as a society, of depleting our social capital. It’s up to us to take that warning seriously.
My wife of forty-eight years and I have two grown children, a son and daughter in their thirties, so perhaps we don’t technically qualify as a “Solo Agers.” But maybe I should say “not yet.” The truth is, as I said earlier, eventually, one member of a couple dies before the other. On a statistical basis, bereavement affects women more than men, but I have more than one close male friend