Book: “Making the Best of What’s Left When We’re Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered” by Judith Viorst
“In the meantime… enjoy being not dead.” Joan Retallack
This March, I celebrate Judith Viorst, bestselling author and nonagenarian. In her 50-year writing career, Viorst has written bestselling books for children and adults with compassion, humor and delight, but this, her most recent book, is part memoir and part advice-filled.
Now 94 and living in a retirement community in Washington, DC (that she considers marvelous and wonderful except “for the fact that everyone’s old”) she explores the late life meaning of second chances and discusses loss that moves between grief and levity.
With its anecdotes and memories, this book will especially resonate with those of us in our 80s who own her books of poetry and her bestsellers “Necessary Losses” and “Nearing Ninety.” In the years beyond 80, which she calls the “Final Fifth of Life,” she discusses the changes in our body and in our brains, where we live, what we can and can no longer do, and how to balance freedom and loneliness.
She explores the meanings of wisdom and happiness and second chances. She contends that the best part of continuing care communities is that no one makes impolite comments about being old and decrepit and others around her have similar memories of historical events such as Kennedy’s assassination and the birth of rock ‘n roll.
Related: Book Review: What Jackie Taught Us
But she also notices that in old age, people speak to us slower and louder. She ends each chapter with a poem and probably her best chapter title is “Growing Old Along with Me and My Home Health Aide.” She grapples with the belief in an afterlife, finding another mate, and disposing of life’s belongings, but concludes that you probably won’t get the old chairs you own reupholstered because you’re “just too busy with all the activities at the old folks’ home.”
She regards the Golden Years as the time you finally get to retire and then the body starts to fail. You worked so hard to obtain all your belongings and now, you have had to downsize and get rid of most of them. And she knows well of what she writes. She and her husband of 65 years (he died of Covid in 2022) lived in the Cleveland Park area of Washington, DC in a home with 7 bedrooms, 5 fireplaces, and a large wall of 15,000 books which she traded for a two-bedroom apartment.
Readers like me will laugh at her descriptions of special events at the continuing care community where the dominant fashion is the “elasticized waistbands, our accessories are walkers and canes, the only genuine color of hair remains by a landslide fifty shades of grey, and we all look like advertisements for memory supplements.”
I’d love to gift a copy of this book to everyone in every continuing care facility as Viorst truly knows of our daily changes and challenges and offers us hope and advice for the rest of our days. But more important, she makes us laugh and appreciate every minute of the time we have left. Readers have said this book is Viorst at her best because “it’s a manifesto against ageism.” I totally agree.
