A Group Portrait of New York’s ‘Oldest Old’ - The New York Times

 "Early this year, I began visiting these six elders, asking simple questions about their lives. What gets them going in the mornings? What are their aspirations, their concessions to age? Do they want to live to 100? Without the daily drumbeat of work or family responsibilities, where do they find meaning and purpose?

Men and women age 85 and above are one of the city’s fastest-growing groups, but they are almost invisible. It is a time of love, pain and abrupt change. Six New Yorkers share their stories.

What they shared, each in a different way, was a story of abrupt change — the loss of a spouse or a home, a sudden turn in health, the arrival of new love, the pain that signals only more pain to come. At the beginning and the end, life moves quickly.

Two of the six planned to live to extravagant ages. Two said they were ready to die. One lived in a nursing home, one in a third-story apartment with no elevator. Two talked about sex. One mourned for her home and the friends she had to leave behind, one for his partner of 60 years.

They buried brothers, sisters, parents, children, peers. They lived through the Depression, World War II, Nazi labor camps and the AIDS epidemic, but now they often find themselves with no one to listen to their memories.

Few ever expected to be so old. None had a formula for how to do it."

A Group Portrait of New York’s ‘Oldest Old’ - The New York Times:



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