 And welcome to my program on Elderhood, Elderhood Aging Gracefully. My name is Larry A. Grimm, Larry Grimm, and I am happy to be a part of this with Think Tank Hawaii, giving an opportunity for us to look at Elderhood as a stage of life and to make it real and to make it wonderful. I am two years on the island of Oahu, and it has been quite an adventure, quite a journey for me. So thrilled to be here. I wish you a low-high Friday today, getting ready for the weekend, and people are very happy to welcome it and prepare for it on a low-high Friday. Hawaii is an amazing place. It's a wonderful, wonderful state, and it's a fantastic paradise to live in. It surrounds us, and it's a great place. It's so very attractive that it is number one place in the United States for retirement. And that's part of what I'm about. Since I've been here in Hawaii, I have for the past two years had the privilege of working with Bristol Hospice Hawaii as one of their chaplains. I served as a chaplain in Colorado, also in hospice care and long-term care. Also I've been a Presbyterian minister in congregational life. So I've worked with elders all my life, all my career. And in that working with elders, I have come to the point of saying that we, at this stage of life, deserve a context in which to understand who we are, how we're working, how we're living. And I call it Elderhood. We had childhood, we had our youth, we had adulthood, and now we have our elderhood. And I'm a stage thinker, and the way I think about the way we move through life and mature is that we have stage issues or stage tasks that come up for us in our consciousness. And today I would like to go deeper into those stages with you because it's going to provide a framework for my whole program, for my whole show, as I move from week to week or as we start in September, week to every other week, starting on Tuesdays in September of 17. So I want you to have that framework for understanding the basic way in which I serve, understand Elderhood, the basic way in which I also do personal coaching, personal life coaching for people going through Elderhood, to give an opportunity to really process some of these tasks that rise up and present themselves for us to take on. So I want to look at those tasks in just a few minutes here. But before I do, I'd like to read a few phrases that are indications of why this time of life has a distinctive character and quality about it. My very good friend on the island here, Buzz Tennant, just turned 65, and on the eve of his birthday he wrote these words, among other words, that he said I could share with you. You've entered that fabulous Netheregion, often euphemistically referred to as the glorious, colorful, and slightly eccentric golden years, as a newly minted, particularly as a certified wheezing geezer of the male gender. You know how you now have the ability to choose your path, namely to continue living your life with characteristic passion and enthusiasm, doing what you love, following your bliss, growing and evolving with grace, acceptance and humor, or bow down to the inevitable diminution of mind, body and spirit, in a complacent state akin to withering on the vine as the protagonist in the Shawshank Redemption laments. If you're not busy living, you're busy dying. So Buzz indicates that 65 has triggered in him an awareness that there's something new in his life that's about to happen, and he has a choice. It's an either or choice for him at this point, complacence, and the diminution of the body, or to continue with the strength and the fervor and the joy and the enthusiasm of living the life that he has been accustomed to living. I offer also some of few statistics that indicate why this is a particularly important thing to pay attention to in our lives, especially here in Hawaii. In June, the Hawaii Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism released some data from the 2018 state and county population characteristics. According to this group, the state's elderly population, those over 65, grew 33.7% between April 1st, 2010, and July 1st, 2018. This was an average growth over those eight years of 3.6% annually, 3.6%. It also comprised 18.4% of the total population of Hawaii, or 260,000 residents of Hawaii, which is really about a quarter of the population. That means about a quarter of our population is over 65, and we're all in looking for ways to utilize the resources that are available to us in the most effective way. 260,000 residents in 2018, and that made Hawaii the seventh largest aging elder population in the United States and District of Columbia. So why is attention worthy of this? Why is this an age group? Why is this stage of life worthy of our conscious attention? It's also economic issues. Medical spending over the last year of an American's life averages $59,000. Now, 71% of that is paid for by Medicare, 10% paid for by Medicaid, and the outstanding 20% paid for by personal funds. That can be either personal funds from wealth accumulated, or it can be personal funds from insurance policies for long-term care-type policies. There's a tremendous amount of money that goes into elder care, people over the age of 65, and the resources, again, are available to us, and we'll look at how those resources are available and how they can be expended. The most important or the most costly piece in elder care is facility costs, and people can spend from $66,000, $77,000 a year for places to live, and that depends upon the quality of environment, the type of care, the quality of care. So there's money that's being invested in our aging elderhood, there's time that's being invested in elderhood and resources and training of people to provide support and care. I maintain that these spiritual tasks sort of rise up in our lives. They rise up, and it happens in every stage of life, in childhood, in youth, adulthood. All of, as we move through those stages of life, there were demands on us that we had to resolve, things about our psyche and personality and our clarity of who we are, identity issues. Well, there is also a certain number of, I mean, a certain tasks that I've identified just in my observation that also arise for us, and they are worthy of our attention. We need to pay attention to them, and that's what I'd like to focus on today as I set the groundwork, a kind of foundation for all that I do in my caregiving. I do use them as I go through my chaplaincy work, but I also use them as I provide individual online, online coaching, professional coaching for life and faith, I call it. And it's an opportunity to deal with each of these spiritual tasks in the context of each person, of each client that I have online. I can bring all those resources that I have in my own experience and also in the experience of the provisions that I know are available, bear upon an individual's journey through elderhood to make it real and to make it wonderful. As Buzz said, to do with all the joy and passion and all of the enthusiasm that you've been experiencing it, not given just to the malaise of an average, succumb to the malaise of the diminution of life. The first of those spiritual tasks, as they are presented, and Rob, would you put that up now? There are five spiritual tasks that I've identified, and this is just, this is because I've worked with elders all my life and all my career. And they don't necessarily go one by one, don't necessarily go step by step in the, but they do come in to our consciousness. And as they do, we recognize that we are indeed in our elderhood. Elderhood is not a matter just of turning 65, in other words, it's a matter of being aware that this is what's happening in my life and in my inner life, my inner consciousness, grieving, sorting out, forgiving, preparing, and letting go. And I'd like to look at each of these in a little more depth throughout the rest of the program, just today. Perhaps I can touch on grieving as we, just before our break, we're going to have a break here in a minute, but some have said that aging is accumulating a series of losses, accumulating a series of losses. When I was doing long-term care, I sat down in the lobby one day with one of our residents sitting next to me, and I said, hello, Ruth. And he said, hello, Larry. And then she said, how old are you? I said, well, I'm 55. And she said, and I bet you're doing everything you can, possibly can, to stay healthy. Right? I said, yeah, I'm eating well. I'm getting good exercise. I take care of my body. Yeah, I'm really doing everything I can to be well. And she said, why? Now, Ruth had been independent living up until the last year of that before that day. And she had been losing her sight and losing her ability to walk. She had been all through her life, a very active young woman in Colorado. She had been a part of the Evangelistic team, singing and dancing with her father and her siblings in northern Colorado. She had been so active in her elderhood and very strongly involved in her own personal care, but she'd lost her friends. She lost her family. She lost her, lost her, now was losing her legs and now was losing her sight. And so grief became part of her story and how she was moving every day through her life. Why are you taking care of yourself? Why do you want to live to be 99? And she was expressing that grief. So we do experience this grief that comes up. And it becomes a strong, strong force in our lives. Grieving affects every relationship. It affects the way in which we make decisions. It affects our daily lives, even how we sleep. We're going to take a minute break here or take a break for a minute. And then I'll be right back with the other discussion of the rest of the task. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at 1 o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Gempel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about. Human stories about law and life. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Wendy Lowe, and I want you to join me as we take our health back. On my show, all we do is talk about things in everyday life, in Hawaii or abroad. I have guests on board that would just talk about different aspects of health. In every way, whether it's medical health, nutritional health, diabetic health, you name it, we'll talk about it. Even financial health. We'll even have some of the Miss Hawaii's on board. And all the different topics that I feel will make your health and your lifestyle a lot better. So come join me. I welcome you to take your health back. Mahalo. Hello. Welcome back to Elderhood. Aging gracefully, I'm Larry Grimm, a host of the show. In this show, I've devoted to today's program to explaining the foundation by which I operate. I'm going to organize the show, and I'm also going to, I also organize my professional coaching for people online, one-on-one and group coaching. Focusing mostly on elderhood, those who find themselves in that time of life, which is really a special time of life, a unique time of life, an age at which, you know, we've never been this age before. And especially we baby boomers. We are part of what's called a silver tsunami. And that's a typical way of talking about it here in Hawaii, because we are, of course, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And it's always possible for us to feel, here have the effects of giant waves that will affect our island life. So part of a silver tsunami, which means that we are part of that 260,000 residents of Colorado, a fourth of the Hawaii population that is 65 and over. But elderhood is not marked just by age. Elderhood is marked by the spiritual tasks that come up and require our attention. I've identified five spiritual tasks that seem to be prominent within this elderhood time of life. And they say to us, you've got to pay attention. We don't always pay attention. They want our attention, and if we ignore them, then I think we do to ignore them to the detriment of our experience. If we take them on and work with them and process them, these internal urgings and surging, then we'll turn our life into something so glorious and meaningful. And I like to say real, real, and wonderful. Before the break, I spoke about grieving. And grieving is such a prominent feeling. It's an emotion that we have. We often discount it because, well, it's so common. We have to deal with it all the time. And we say, okay, I'm grieving. We don't even know that we're grieving, actually. We have a series of losses and we sort of accept the fact that we've had these losses and we're going to deal with them. Grief can come in the loss of the capability, of an identity. A job retirement, retirement is not all that glorious because you can lose your sense of who you are and have to re-figure that, reconfigure that. Grieving can come from the loss of a car, the loss of a child, the loss of a dog, the loss of a loving pet with whom you've had a strong bond. And the Rainbow Bridge is a group that acknowledges how very, very strong the bonds are between people and their pets. And the loss of those pets can bring about a great deal of real, honest grief. I often say we grieve to the extent that we have loved. If we've loved like this, we grieve like this. If we have loved like this, we grieve like this. It's kind of commensurate. So the second task is sorting out, I say. Now people love to sort out their stuff at this age, right? You go to the basement and you look at the stuff in the basement or in the attic and you say, how did I accumulate all of this stuff? And when you begin sorting it out, you begin sorting out what you're going to keep, what you're going to give away, what you're going to pass along as an heirloom to others in your family perhaps. But I maintain that the most important part of that is not the piece itself and the stuff itself, but the stories, the stories that are attached to the stuff. Now you can have stories that are not attached to stuff, stories that you tell about yourself and about your past. The stories that you tell, when you tell them are like remembering who you are and how the event from the past helped to shape the person that you are right now. And the retelling of the story is a way of reliving that experience. I have my own stories that I tell, one of being assisting my second daughter's birth, both daughters, I was part of their birth, very creative and wonderful experience as a father to be involved in their entrance into this world, into their coming forth into this world. That says something about me right now. So we tell stories about ourselves as a way of refusing to forget. An amnesis is the Greek word and it means not forgetting or remembrance. We say do things in remembrance, do this in remembrance. And it's a way of calling the past experience into the present with all of its meaning and significance and energy and energy. So we look at stories, we look at stories of who we are. You can even rewrite some of your stories and that's an exercise that we can do in the personal coaching. The third thing is forgiving. The third task is to forgive. Now I know that we often think of religious injunctions that we have to forgive. Jesus talked about forgiving, almost compelled us to forgive. But what I'm finding is that this comes, no matter what religious background a person has, desire to forgive. Now forgiving is different from reconciling. Reconciling means rebuilding a relationship, a relationship that's been broken in some way. Now it may involve forgiving, it may involve confronting and forgiving. Reconciliation takes more than one person, it takes a group or two people who want to rebuild, to re-establish their goodness in their relationship. I think the Hawaiian action is ho'oponopono, which puts that goodness back in the relationship, get us back to aloha, sharing the love with one another. Reconciliation means to re-friend one, each other, re-counsel. And that can be done in elderhood and sometimes face-to-face needs to be done. If it's at all possible, but it takes both people being willing. Forgiveness, on the other hand, can be something that we unilaterally do. Forgiving another person who has offended you or me, forgiving another person that has held something away from me that I maybe think has been unjust or unrighteous. Conflict or disagreement that was never resolved, I can forgive. I can forgive that person and that sets me free from the bonds of maintaining anger or grudge or seeking vengeance. I find that people want to do this. They just want to have the slate clean as they come into this elderhood of time of their life. And to do so, again, contributes to that, making that elderhood real and wonderful. The fifth one is preparing. Preparing covers so much, of course. Now there are the externals that we'll look at. We'll look at some externals. I want to interview some of the people in hospice care, Crystal Hospice, who are so good at assisting in lining up resources and dealing with the legalities of elder care, of connecting with the resources, of identifying what needs to be done. Have you done your advanced directives? Have you planned for your funeral? Have you established clearly what kind of interventions you want to maintain your life if you're in an accident or if you're severely damaged by a disease? There are tools out there that will look at that enable us externally to prepare the way for that demise when it will happen. Not if it should happen, but when it will happen. And to set everybody's mind at ease. But there is also an internal dimension to preparing. And that is, what do you imagine life will be like beyond death? Basically, there are four stories, four narratives about afterlife. One narrative is that the lights go out, the building shut down, you leave the building, the lights go out, and that's it. That's one belief in human cultures. Second belief is that the body in some way will be resurrected or restored through reincarnation. Body becomes revivified eventually and continues on in eternity. The third is that we join our ancestors and the divine presence, and we all gather together in celebration in our consciousness. The fourth is that we live on in our legacy that we leave here. In Kenya, there was a village that said, as long as someone in our village remembers you, you are alive. There's a kind of hope that our legacy, which we will pass on in the things that were valuable to us, not just things, but in terms of our spiritual life, or in terms of our commitments and values, we want to proceed and continue. So we'll look at some of that with the help of externals, people who are very much involved, particularly from Bristol Hospice, who are involved in the caregiving, the look at the dimensions of what's available to us when we need them, and now to prepare. The last spiritual task is kind of somewhat tied in with the first. It's letting go. Many times I stood outside the door of a dying patient, and the family member came out and said, you know, mom just won't let go. And I would say, yeah, I know it. But why would she want to? Why would any of us want to let go? It is a spiritual task to let go, and we practice it many times up until our last breath when we let go of this body and this life and this world in which we live. So there are two ways to come into Elderhood. If you land a plane, I was in East Coast, Richmond, Virginia for a while. I flew into Asheville once. We were above the clouds, and the clouds were stormy over Asheville Airport. The pilot came on and said, okay, folks, we're flying above the storms. We're going to circle, we're going to just hang out here until I find an opening. He found an opening, and we dove down into the landing and through the clouds to the landing. And we just, it was a white knuckle time for most of us. There's that kind of landing that we can do in our life as well into Elderhood. Or we can come into Honolulu Airport, which is a nice long glide over the ocean and land gracefully. That's what I do with my elder care. That's what I do in personal coaching for life and faith. Thanks for joining me.