Sitting looking over a sparkling river, my 92-year-old mother and I were chatting about little things. The lovely day, the need for a dry-cleaning drop and kookaburras. Then she pointed at a blond beach bend and said, “Scatter me there when I’m dead.” I responded, “It’s a beautiful spot, Mum – do you want some cake?”
I was not being glib in this confronting conversation. It was afternoon teatime and this is how my family do chats; we go from cake to carking it. We combine the big, the small and the space beyond. Besides, I already knew that’s where she wanted to end up.
We’ve always been a family who goes there. Including on the two big topics of life – sex and death. There was no big “sex talk” at adolescence. No sitting us down, squirming with embarrassment and launching into the whole “when a couple really love each other”. There was instead matter-of-fact information given in cake-sized chunks, questions answered in age-appropriate ways and increments of information that built up over the years.
This is now how parents are advised to have the sex talk. Don’t make it a big deal, answer curiosity with candour and use concepts and language that are suited to that child’s level of intellectual development.
And this is how I’d like to recommend we have the ageing and death talk.
Introduced carefully, in small chunks, in age-appropriate ways. Avoiding these conversations won’t cause teen pregnancies and disease but it will lead to a great deal of stress, anguish and a complication of grief for families.
The baby boomers redefined what it meant to be young. Their generation came of age at a time of endless possibilities, explored sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and got to tune in, drop out, then seize power. But while they have won a lot in the lottery of life, they won’t be able to defeat ageing and death.
I’m hoping they can face the inevitable with the same passion to do things differently. The oldest boomers are in their late 70s. In 2032 it’s estimated 62,000 of them in Australia will turn 85. That’s five times more than turned that age last year. Fertility rates have fallen and life expectancy is rising. The opposite of the baby boom is the ageing, illness, dependency and death boom and our hospitals, our healthcare and our psyches are not prepared for it at all. It’s going to hurt.
Boomers were perhaps the first generation to come up with birth plans for having babies. Now they need to start making aged care and death plans – and they need to start now.
An initial chat could start at 70 with something like “when a couple really love each other and their kids they … reveal they have decided to downsize to a single-storey townhouse with no garden”.
At 80 give your thoughts about whether you want to be force fed if you end up with dementia in an aged care home. At 85 the greatest gift you can give your child is a meaningful plan about what’s important in terms of care and interventions you would want in hospital.
These conversations won’t jinx you, they won’t make you age faster – they will actually help your child age slower. Because the stress of having to push parents towards decisions and realities is psychologically bruising, and it ultimately often comes down to one son or daughter. And they’re struggling right now.
She’s the middle-aged woman you may see crying in frustration at the counter in Centrelink. She’s the sixtysomething stressed at work because after a long day she’s still got go drop food, pick up washing and do shopping for her ninetysomething mum. He’s the guy who gets pushed out of a job because he missed two big meetings when his mum went back into hospital for the fifth time this year.
I’ve been the primary carer for my mother and previously Mum and Dad for more than a decade. It’s demanding, stressful and requires endless diplomacy. It’s also emotionally exhausting. Eight years on from selling the family home I still wake up in a panic when it rains too much because I fear the roof will be leaking. But I’ve been lucky. I know what my parents wanted in life and death. We’d had the “death talk”. We’d also had the aged care facility talk many times.
Some conversations are hard. But without them decisions will be made for you.
And leaving things unsaid – and unfaced – is unfair.
So, beautiful boomers. Sit down that child you once sat down for the sex talk. Take a deep breath. And tell them what you’re thinking about the unthinkable.
Sarah Macdonald is a writer, broadcaster, an advocate for the sandwich generation and an ambassador for Violet organisation