Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: aging

  • Thinking of my dying grandmother at the Natural History Museum

    Roxana CazanAltoona, Pennsylvania, United States At the Natural History Museumin Salt Lake City, I am promised“the assemblage of nature’s ultimatemachine,” its precise lurking,one foot crossing the Silurian,its simian lurch trapped behindshatterproof glass.I zigzag through the dinosaur world,the tender bend of boney necks,their petrified savagery mintedinto thick layers of shale,their swift death on display.When I pass…

  • Five Untitled Poems

    Simon PerchikEast Hampton, New York, United States * Slowly the glass, half filled, halfmelting down for a slippernot yet hardened into light is flickering the way a moonstill sets itself on firethen changes into taking its time and you become an old womanwith a cane, around and aroundas if this rim at last remembers overflows…

  • Age needs a graying goddess of prophecy and her name shall be Senexa

    Margaret Morganroth GulletteWaltham, MA, USA Age needs a tutelary deity, a woke goddess for the Age of Alzheimer’s and the Age of Longevity. We all deserve a powerful, honored, and glorious crone, representing our values and our value. Here, transparently, before your open eyes, I venture to create a symbol. The Goddess of Age looks much like…

  • Breese Nursing Home: an exploration of humanity and love

    Ellen Jantzen Newport Beach, California, United States   I attended a nursing home Christmas party at the Breese Nursing Home in Illinois the week before Christmas, 2010 and was very moved by the residents and their families; it was a life-changing event for me. Before, while visiting my mother-in-law, I would divert my eyes when…

  • All life is a gift

    “I am tired,” said Mr. Hale. “I’m fifty-five years of age, and that little fact of itself accounts for any loss of strength.”“Nonsense! I’m upward of sixty and feel no strength, either bodily or mental. Don’t let me hear you talking so. Fifty-five! Why, you’re quite a young man.”-Elisabeth Gaskell, North and South, 1855 At…

  • Those golden years

    Richard SobelKibbutz Revivim, Israel “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it.” Jeanne Clement was one hundred ten years old but cheerful and lucid when she made that remark during an interview. She may still have been smoking: she stopped only when her vision became too poor to see the cigarette well…

  • Tithonus and Eos

    Emilio MordiniParis, France The Pio Monte della Misericordia, a building in the historic center of Naples, is today a museum that exhibits important paintings such as Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy and many Neapolitan Caravaggists. Here the visitor may come across a large painting of a gorgeous, blonde woman rising from pink and blue…

  • Immigrants, all

    Eric PfeifferTampa, Florida, USA Poet’s statement I am so lucky. My poems write themselves. I only listen. Immigrants, allOld age was a foreign countrywhen I first came here,another language spoken,and customs hard to understand. But I have learned the language.Sometimes I even dreamin my new tonguethough idioms still elude me. I tried to ask the…

  • Age and aging

    Myron WeinerDallas, Texas Age, a mere number, is neither enemy nor friend. Aging Stirs us from primordium Though maturation To our universal fate. Age measures our finitude Aging, our fortitude. Adding strength when young Stripping when old Of sensibilities Of strength Leaving only lassitude. The years are not to be feared, Rather, our decrepitude. Age…

  • Enhanced creativity in later life

    Melissa Castora-BinkleyElizabeth HandingSouth Florida The increased capacity for creativity in later life is not a new concept. Both professional and amateur artists alike have created some of their best works in later life. Galenson1 described some well-known lifetime artists such as, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Virginia Woolf, and Robert Frost who were arguably past their “prime” when…