Q: Our Aunt Nell is the character of characters, the ultimate in caring for social causes, the disabled, the disenfranchised and just about anyone you might meet who is struggling with daily challenges.
Eighty-one years old and Aunt Nell has signed on for a course learning conversational Ukrainian, which might have something to do with the war there.
She never married, has no children of her own and really has no one except for a few of us nieces and nephews to work with her.
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Could you share some insights into the aging process so that we can understand what is going on with her and continue to support whatever it is that keeps her healthy and wise.
A: You obviously have a remarkable figurehead in your family, caught in the personage of your Aunt Nell. I would love to meet her. I do not have any hidden magic to spring into the Aunt Nell’s ways and means, nor does anyone. but with a whole stack of research coming from extra time in studies assisted with MRIs, Cat scans and various other machines they have for exploring the brain and its comforting neurological systems, we are at least beginning to understand a little better some of what is going on with those people, like Aunt Nell, who seem to be successfully meeting the challenges of getting older.
One of the findings is the tendency of the elderly to cut down the conflict to which they are exposed. They cannot avoid conflict entirely and I am not sure that they even want to try, but what they can do is limit interpersonal tensions.
In that light you might wonder about Aunt Nell’s distaste for all those Russian-Ukrainian battles grabbing the headlines, but remember, you did not report the times Aunt Nell spent thinking or worrying about those battles. You reported only that she has signed on to learn conversational Ukrainian. She is not overthinking the war, she is not obsessing the tragedies emerging from the battlefields, she is just learning the language.
That is good for her. Your brain is much like any other muscular cluster of cells in your body. It needs to be exercised to keep it primed for better performances. What could be better exercise than learning to speak a different language? The research tells us that learning new languages is near the top of cognitive activities in which a person can engage to stave off seeping dementias.
There are other projects, including doing crossword puzzles, writing autobiographies, following Grandma Moses to paint pictures in her studio, making music and so on.
The point is that you can best help your Aunt Nell by listening to her when she speaks, by encouraging, and not depreciating her drive to learn the nuances of different languages, and by slipping lots of greens or other brain foods into her daily diet.
Of course, that love you feel for her when she is standing in front of you is beyond compare for the plusses it drives into her personal well being. Your affection for her is great.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
