Interview With Mrs. N --:

Interview with Mrs. N --:

study in resilience and defiance of the stereotypes attached to old age

For the purposes of this assignment, my interview subject was one Mrs. N --, a 85-year-old friend of my mother's who used to run the small, corner grocery store in my town when I was growing up. My mother's family still has some contact with Mrs. N --, and when I learned, somewhat to my surprise that she was still living in the area, the area where she had grown up, she seemed like an ideal subject to examine the transition into the final stage of life. She was not a family member, but she was friendly enough with my family that she would not be offended by any questions posed to her over the course of a probing interview. I did have something of an acquaintance with her, since I used to buy ice cream and candy from her, or pick up some cold cuts or bread from her store during the summer when I rode my bike, but it was not to the point that it would interfere with my objectivity.

Discussing the store proved to be a good way of developing a rapport during the interview between myself and my subject. I asked how long it had been since she had abandoned the store, and she said she had done so after her husband died. The two of them had moved into the area from the Italian-American community in Brooklyn, where both of them had grown up. They came looking for a nicer, suburban location to raise their children. The area, she explained to me, was very rural, long before I was born, and she could still remember many of the busy streets when they were lined with trees, and even some of the roads I took for granted were fields and pavement. During the interview at several occasions, she made comments about the noise outside and how much things had changed. This type of positive nostalgia is often typical of older adults, who may wish to remember their formative years in the past as better than the present.

Both Mrs. N -- and Mr. N -- spent most of their lives running the store they had bought and raising their children. Mrs. N -- worked the cash register and her husband, who had been trained as a butcher, ran the deli and meats section in the back. I remember the store had always been known as a nice place to get cheeses and meats, particularly for Italian-Americans in the area. Mrs. N -- expressed regrets that so many things had changed recently, that the stores had become so faceless and generic. She also expressed fond memories for her husband, but she did not seem lonely, which was one of my questions.

She was still very close to her two daughters and their families, and visited them frequently, and one of her friends was departing when I arrived. Although she had sold the store after her husband's death, she said the decision was partly financial, as they had saved enough for retirement, not because she felt she could not run the store without him. Mrs. N -- expressed pride in making enough money from the store to establish a business, buy property she could rent, and to put her two daughters through college. She claimed personal pride in this achievement, and did not see this as her husband's accomplishment, but a mutual one, as they had both worked equally hard in the store.

This also undercut the common conception that women of previous generations uniformly lacked vocational and esteem-building resources. Another surprising finding was the high level of cognitive function Mrs. N -- showed. Mrs. N -- said that working with the public had kept her 'sharp' mentally and physically. Mrs. N -- never went to college, only finished high school, as did her husband, which she said was fairly typical of her community and era, and she did not have any regrets that she did not go to college although she was proud of both daughters' educational and vocational achievements.

Physically, Mrs. N -- was neither over nor underweight, which bodes well, since being underweight can be a sign of physical neglect in the elderly, while being overweight can cause health problems such as insulin-resistant diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. She said she did occasionally bring food to her children, the Italian foods they enjoyed when they were young. Cooking did not seem to be her passion, but she did like to help out her children because 'you young people are so busy nowadays.' She said she preferred to eat in the middle of the day, which seemed to help with her digestion, and only ate sparsely at night.

On Sundays, when she did not see her children, she often dined with some of her neighborhood friends, mostly Italian-American women who were also widows, and also occasionally with some friends from the town, people she had met from back when her children were in school, at the hairdressers, and so forth. While not an immigrant per se, Mrs. N -- was strongly identified with the Italian-American community most of her life, and it has been observed that the support of a community, and mingling with ethnic "cohorts" can ease the developmental transition into old age, defined as "1) letting go of the children, (2) retirement, (3) grandparenthood, (4) loss of siblings and peers through death, and (5) declining physical health and anticipation of death" (Akhtar & Choi 20004:183).

She used to own several dogs that she walked regularly in the evening, after the shop closed. She continued to keep dogs and to maintain her own property until she lost mobility her left hip. Before the interview, it was notable that she walked with a walker. However, this was not due to the natural process of aging, but the fact that when visiting one of her daughters, while getting out of a taxi, the cab pulled away before she had alighted, pulling her for several feet. She had never been able to walk normally since, and said that the accident had substantially shaken her confidence, and harmed the quality of her life. She was no longer able to have dogs or take care of her own property. Now she had a 'woman' come to the house once a week to help her with cleaning and a gardener for the exterior of her property, which she had never indulged in before. Only because of her strong confidence and belief in her past accomplishments was she able to maintain a strong sense of self.Her health insurance felt that her rehabilitation was complete, and she had elected not to prosecute the cab driver, although she expressed bitterness that a freak accident and the driver's inconsideration, rather than her decrepitude now limited her lifestyle.