Joyce Wayne: Retirement Matters

We’re all feeling vulnerable these days so if you’re an older adult feeling that way, you’re certainly not alone. In fact, a new campaign called Catch the Scam, launched by HomeEquity Bank, reports that in an Ipsos-commissioned survey 91% of Canadians 55 years of age or better believe they are now more vulnerable to scams.

Have you ever read a book that changed your life? I have. The book is Lives of Girls and Women by Canadian short story author Alice Munro. This July, she turned 89. During the last fifty years, she’s won just about every award a fiction writer can win: the Nobel Prize for literature, the International Booker Prize, three Governor-General Awards, two Giller prizes, several Trillium awards and the U.S. National Book Award.

Just when I thought that suburban living had lost its luster, a bright light is once again shining on homes in the suburbs, small towns and far away places in rural Canada. Who knew? Before the COVID pandemic it appeared that downtown condos, small spaces with little or no gardens, were coveted properties by young and older adults alike.

With each week of self-imposed isolation, I’ve come to realize how central restaurants are to my daily life, and daresay, to my well-being, let alone the joy of partaking in delicious food, which is, in and of itself a wondrous experience.

That day in May, geriatric experts proclaimed that the situation in long-term care facilities was a 20-year disaster in the making, yet it took a pandemic to expose it. Years of hidden neglect, overcrowding, unsanitary, cockroach infested conditions, not addressed by two decades of provincial governments, finally dominated the news, grabbing our attention while breaking our hearts.

His findings erode the idea that older adults naturally grow uninterested and uninteresting as they age and that an inevitable lethargy sets in over time. According to Dr. Daniel, there are apparent “neurochemical changes that make older adults happier.” What he terms the ‘positivity bias’ or the tendency in older adults to see the good qualities in people and situations, makes for the happiest and often most productive adult demographic neurologists have studied

It’s almost unimaginable to think that the most vulnerable of our ageing population has been left to fend for themselves in perilous conditions. When I think of what it must be like, alone and frightened, my only response is that as a country, we need to commit to changing this situation and to ensuring that it will not happen again if and when the next virus is on the loose.

No matter how well self-isolating is going, I suggest making a calendar of online events you enjoy with friends and family – or organizations – outside the home. That way, the balancing act between isolation and keeping occupied is met, and you don’t wake up one morning wondering what you did with all that time during the pandemic.

Canadians took full notice, and within a day, everything changed. Our lives transformed in ways that none of us has ever experienced. Sequestered at home, or facing essential work in public, nothing was the same, or was it?

Rather than dashing off to various doctors’ appointments, LocateMotion remotely connects us with healthcare providers without forcing us to leave our homes, or to wait on hold for hours as we try to connect with government health lines. I can only imagine how useful this service could be, as the Corona Virus takes its toll, and not just on physical health, but mental health as well.