Listening to The Elders: A Global Quest for the Secrets of a Long and Happy Life

By Brian Schofield

How should we prepare for later life? And how should we all, as societies, prepare for our rapidly ageing populations? What are the secrets – personal and national – of growing older happily and well? Award-winning British travel writer Brian Schofield sets off on a deeply personal mission in search of the answers, visiting and interviewing elders in Afghanistan, Tobago, Japan, The Cook Islands, Calabria, Kenya, Tanzania and Florida, to uncover the Ten Rules of happiness and well-being in later life. His challenging, surprising discoveries encourage people of all ages to reconsider their relationships, families and communities, in pursuit of a culture that better embraces and celebrates the energies, inspiration and insights of all our elders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483503783

Brian Schofield

Brian Schofield is a travel writer and author. His work has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday, GQ, Arena, Condé Nast Traveller, and New Statesman. He is the author of Selling Your Father's Bones. 

Book preview

Florida.

CHAPTER ONE

Florida

Younger Next Year. Grow Young. Stop Ageing Now! Stay Young, Start Now. Feel Thirty for the Next Fifty Years. Future Youth: How to Reverse the Ageing Process. Live Now, Age Later. Ten Weeks to a Younger You.

The Self-Help section of Haslam’s bookshop, St Petersburg, Florida

In the end, the discovery that one is old is inescapable, but most Americans are not prepared to make it.

David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old in America

Thanks to the dark miracle of the internet, and the almost incontinent public openness of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, anybody can listen to Russell and Laura Dorner’s final moments, their private apocalypse just left, thoughtlessly, on perpetual online display.

The emergency call begins with a slight pause, then Russell Dorner’s wavering voice speaks slowly and methodically, as if reading from a piece of paper.

‘911, I’m just letting you know that me and my wife are going to commit suicide right now. We’ve had all we can take . . .’

The dispatcher breaks in, urgently: ‘What’s going on?’

The interruption throws Dorner. He begins to sob, struggling to form words between shuddering breaths. ‘Well, she’s bed-ridden and can’t do nothing . . . My back went out today. I can’t pick her up. I can’t even bend over. And we want to go alone, together.’

Panicking a little, the dispatcher says, ‘Let’s get someone to come out there and help you out . . . Do you have any family . . . ?’

The call ends with the muffled crack of two gunshots.

The dispatcher sent two deputies round to the Dorners’ home, in their low-rent Florida retirement community, where they found the 79-year-old Laura in bed and her 80-year-old husband on the floor beside her, lying next to the gun and the phone. Neighbours said that Laura had been incapacitated by a neurological illness, while Russell had just got old. The couple hadn’t received regular family visitors, the neighbours said – they had no kids together, and Russell had a daughter from a previous relationship, but they never spoke.

The couple had carefully laid out their cremation instructions, financial papers and address book, in neat piles, for the police to find. They didn’t want to cause any unnecessary trouble.

‘Welcome to Shell Point, folks,’ declared the minibus driver over his shoulder. ‘This place is a lot like Disneyland – if you’re not happy here, they’ll make you happy.’

After a short drive through quiet, airy streets, we stepped off into the shady town square. The village church stood open behind us, facing a public pavilion where a ragtime band were entertaining the long queue for the hot-dog stall. A giant buffet restaurant, plus a smaller café and a gleaming, brassy bar were all open for business, as was a community centre where voluntary groups were taking donations and signatures for causes large and small. Lush greenery was everywhere, reducing our view of the surrounding structures to glimpses of whitewash and windows, but street signs pointed to the bank, the hospital, the apartment blocks, the health centre and the wide streets of sprawling mansion bungalows. Water was everywhere, in ponds, canals and inlets. This was a man-made island, a dredged-up addition to Florida’s Gulf Coast, now converted into a bustling, gregarious small town – but one that you had to be over sixty years old to move into.

I wandered into the shade of the church, where a dashing blond man was walking between the aisles, delivering the sales pitch we were all there to hear:

‘. . . And I’m not just talking to you today as an employee of this community, but as a customer – my parents are residents here, so’s my father-in-law. I believe in Shell Point so much, I can sell it to my parents.

‘We are the largest continuing care retirement community in Florida, we have over 2,200 residents in total right now, and 850 staff. What we offer here is Lifecare – how many of you have heard that term before?

‘Well, you’re probably here because you’re thinking about your future, and asking those What if? questions: What if something happens to me, or to my spouse? I don’t want my children to worry, my nephews and nieces. Well, Lifecare answers those questions.’

At quite a price, it emerged. The Powerpoint slides flicked past the roomful of silent fifty- and sixty-somethings, explaining that getting into Shell Point required an entrance fee ranging from $103,000 for life in a tiny studio apartment to $552,000 for a rambling waterfront bungalow. That was just for occupancy, though: the company still owned the property, the entrance fee was merely upfront rent. The rest of your rent was paid monthly: from around $1,300 for the studio up to $4,500 for the pad.

In return, you got a ‘resort retirement’. Shell Point had four restaurants, two gyms, a championship golf course, three libraries, four pools, a residents’ orchid house, a theatre, a television studio, 75 boat ramps, two hotels, plus a current count of 69 community clubs and associations that included a ‘university’ and a globe-hopping travel club. Then, when all that had driven you to exhaustion, the real selling point kicked in – apparently complete liberation from the worrisome ordeal of securing old-age care in modern America.

‘What the Lifecare contract says, essentially, is that if you pay your entrance fee and monthly fee, when you need it, we will provide you with unlimited assisted living and nursing home care, for as long as you are here. Unlimited. We have five physicians on staff, up to 10 specialist clinics a week, our own home healthcare agency, our own pharmacy, an entire hospital floor dedicated to memory care, a hospice, an Alzheimer’s garden . . .’

It was an enticing pitch – a ‘young old’ age of constant activity, fine weather and reliable company, followed by an ‘old old’ experience that was under your complete control, with no chance of your children spending their weekends looking for a care home to drop you in, no agonised negotiations over home visits and lifts to the hospital. It was no surprise to learn that Shell Point, despite a cataclysm in America’s property market, only had space for about twenty new arrivals, and that its expansion plans roamed over the surrounding swampland.

‘The average age of people coming into Shell Point is around 72, but our youngest residents are about 55 to 56 [many people, it turns out, try to sneak into age-restricted communities early]. And our oldest is 104 – that’s nearly a 50-year spread. We have people here whose parents and grandparents stayed here, and even parents and children here, right now, staying at the same time!’ My fellow listeners, notably, asked the detailed questions of the successfully sold-to, rather than the broad sweeps of the unconvinced.

I, meanwhile, did a few hasty calculations. The average Shell Point resident paid around $250,000 to get in, then $2,500 a month (which increased by over 3 per cent a year). A healthy 70-year-old American has a life expectancy of 14 years, meaning they would drop over three quarters of a million dollars on Shell Point, before potentially dropping dead on the golf course without ever needing a moment’s nursing. It was a pretty tasty business model – and there was a further twist. A gentleman in a white Navy Veteran’s cap got to his feet:

‘I’m sorry, I just want to check something. Did you say there was a physical exam to get into Shell Point?’

‘Yes, there is. If you apply to Shell Point, we do ask you to take a physical, and four lab tests.’ The tests were justified, the salesman argued, by public safety. ‘One of the things we’re really looking for is this – if there was a fire alarm, would you understand it, and would you be able to get yourself out? So a lot of people who don’t get in to Shell Point, it’s because of dementia.’

It made, of course, perfect business sense – the real margins lay with the ‘young old’, not the sickly. But it would soon emerge that this was also the perfect image of my time in Florida, and in many ways the epitome of modern American senior living. For this was a place in which later life had the potential to be more liberated, energetic and entertaining than anywhere else in the world. As long as you had plenty of money – and provided you didn’t actually grow old.

I hopped onto a golf cart for a tour of the rest of the community. A few golfers were out in the midday sun, in their crisp white shorts and polo shirts, but Shell Point’s spotless streets were largely deserted. Every balcony was empty, the silence was absolute. But things were noisier at The Woodlands, a cluster of four Las Vegas-style tower blocks, gathered around yet another epic restaurant complex where my party of potential purchasers were greeted by Shell Point staff eager to tour apartments and talk contracts. I wandered off to talk to a couple of the residents.

Betty and Colleen were sitting chatting in the lobby of The Woodlands. Betty was in her eighties, Colleen her late sixties – though estimates were tricky as they had identical hair colour, a radiant battery copper.

Betty beamed a welcoming smile, and enthusiastically told a courageous, inspirational story: ‘Well, my husband and I retired to Florida, then when he passed away, I thought: Oh my gosh, what am I going to do with my life? I have to make a change. So I moved in here. And you have to give yourself time in a place like this, time to leap in. After a while I felt ready, and I took a breath and said, "Right, I’m going to look at this list of daily activities, and I’m going to do everything that interests me. And I filled up every single day, and just made so many friends. Mostly, I volunteer – that’s what really attracted me to Shell Point, the volunteering opportunities, and that’s where my time goes now.’

Colleen, wide-eyed with eagerness, leapt in: ‘I mean, we are all just so busy here. My diary is full from seven a.m. to five thirty p.m., every day – I’m exhausted! There’s just no spare time to sit in front of the TV and get old.’

Was that the big attraction of life here, the social whirl?

‘No,’ said Colleen, with Betty in vigorous agreement, it’s the independence. That’s what we all talk about, being independent. None of us want our children, our daughters, to have to look after us, to worry about us later on. It’s basically a deal: you sell your house, you move in here and you say to your kids, Hey, I just spent your inheritance – but in return, you don’t ever have to worry about me again, I took care of everything."’

But what about living in a town of over 2,000 people, and no kids?

‘Oh, you see a few kids,’ said Betty, who had no grandchildren of her own. ‘They visit your friends, so they’re about.’ None were visible today.

‘And people worry when they move here that they’ll lose touch with their family, but you can never escape your family,’ insisted Colleen, rolling her eyes. ‘I have grandchildren over in Washington State, and they just love coming to have their holidays here. I get to see them every other year, and that’s great!’

Cypress Cove, Jamaica Bay, Renaissance Preserve, Park Club, Hidden Oaks – the giant curved stone signs sped by as I made a short drive north up the Gulf Coast, each one announcing the gated and guarded entrance to another ‘active senior living village’ or an ‘age-qualified community’. Exit signs declared I was nearing Punta Gorda – the most senior city in America, with an average age approaching 64 – but the land either side of the dead straight highway was so dominated by private corporate enclaves that civic boundaries seemed quaintly meaningless. My next appointment was announced by a giant American flag and yet another grandiose marker: the gold lettering set within a waterfall fountain read: ‘Del Tura Golf and Country Club’.

Bruce met me in the guest parking lot just outside the guard house. A rotund late sixty-something, he’d been living in over-55s’ communities since before he was 55 (people really want to get into these places) and now had a cushy deal as a resident and sales guide for Del Tura. I’d chosen it as a very typical ‘young old’ community – with 1,300 bungalow homes, it didn’t have Shell Point’s facilities for the frailties of later ageing, but was awash with incentives to stay young.

We hopped into the inevitable golf cart and headed up a wide, tree-lined boulevard to the clubhouse, where Bruce showed me the theatre, banqueting suite, bar, restaurant, library, craft rooms, on and on: ‘If you’re inactive here,’ he declared bullishly, ‘it’s your fault.’ Most impressive of all, once again, was the volunteering noticeboard – it stretched the length of a 10-metre corridor, papered with calls to arms for fundraising events for charities both local and international, and pledges of time to local children’s projects, help for housebound elders, park clean-up days and much more. As we left, four ladies in rustling casual wear were also heading outside:

‘We’re the greeting club. Every time someone moves in, we take them a basket of cookies and a guide to all the activities, to make them feel welcome.’ You might expect that role to go to long-term residents of Del Tura, but this party looked only a touch north of 55. Perhaps because their hair was, as before, a uniform shade – a darker copper here, but again a perfectly matching one.

Bruce led me out for the full tour. The sense of natural space and calm was immediate – the town was built around verdant parkland that housed 27 holes of golf, a nature preserve and no fewer than 18 lakes. In sharp contrast was the blur of human activity – power walkers toured the lakes, every tennis court was in use, every swimming pool (there were five) was being gracefully ploughed. Everywhere you looked, wiry, sporty bodies were being strained, a picture of youthfulness minus the youth. (I saw one child – a visiting grandson alone in a shallow end, looking like a kid in a swimming pool with no one to play with.)

But this was certainly not a lifeless place. ‘You see people getting re-energised when they come here,’ said Bruce, ‘it’s like a shot of youth. They’ve worked hard all their lives, and this is what they’ve wished for – they retire as soon as they can, break free and come here. It’s a world unto itself. A completely different world.’

It was an unfamiliar planet, indeed – a strict dress code appeared to be in place, of crinkly sports casual clothing, baseball caps, sun visors and, for the women, any hair colour but grey. The residential streets, with no one visible along their length, were obviously tightly monitored, with no bins visible, no laundry drying outside, no overgrown or underfed lawns, and of course no toys or bikes lying about. ‘It’s a nice, clean, safe community,’ said Bruce as we slid down a deserted street. He knew his audience – the majority of new arrivals in these citadels of seniority cite security as their chief motivation for buying in.

It was almost a relief to enter the gloom of the ‘Village Pub’ and find a few athletic refuseniks enjoying an eleven a.m. beer. They had nothing bad to say about their home town, though: ‘It’s just a friendly, old-fashioned blue-collar community,’ one said. ‘You have to say hello to so many people, you almost get tired of it. There’s something called the Del Tura Wave you have to learn, to live here.’ I’d seen it already – a big palm raised once and held aloft: "Can’t stop – hello and