Adele Horin

It’s not just the extraordinary skill and care of the nursing and medical staff in intensive care , it’s the nourishment you get from being with ordinary, brave, and frequently elderly patients that’s life-affirming. But what I gained from my three nights in one of Sydney’s best public hospitals was more than just excellent care. When you’re sick it’s such a re-assurance to know you have the best of care.

Even though I won a Walkley award back in 1980 for writing a series of articles about sex in Australia it took another 20 years before I really believed old people had sex. I’m fully convinced now that I’m 64, and research supports me, that older people are having more sex than you might think. It would be unfortunate if people are made to feel there’s something wrong with them if sexual desire has fallen away or if they lack a sexual partner. But can we do this necessary work in a way that doesn’t make a lot of people feel bad, people who can’t get sex as they’ve grown older, or don’t want it, or find it all too difficult?

But later in the day I met Janet Morrison who heads the charity Independent Age UK and has been a prime mover in the UK’s Campaign to End Loneliness. People can be lonely at any age, she said, but the dangers for elderly people of bereavement, loss of mobility, of being a carer, or going into aged care threaten to turn a temporary phase into a chronic feeling of hopelessness. “Loneliness and lack of social support are two conditions that may push the individual to feel hopeless, especially those individuals facing stressful life events,” say the authors of a paper called Suicide in the old elderly. One study showed fewer people aged 80 and over who died by suicide had received anti-depressant prescriptions during the last months of life than younger people.

If you’re feeling the pressure to retire from work just resist it, says Renata Singer in her great new book called Older and Bolder. Renata has spent two years interviewing funny and feisty women in Australia and the US aged between 85 and 100 to learn their life lessons. Some women are working hard fulltime, some are being pushed out of jobs, some are being seduced out, and others are grappling with whether they ought to leave and join the throng of retirees who insist they’ve “never been busier. But like Renata, I believe the women – and men – of my generation want to feel useful, stimulated and valued.