Uneven Aging: Anticipatory grief
In addition to the asymmetry of Uneven Aging, when one partner retains good health and the other has a setback, there lurks another divide: that between a temporary and long-term situation. It is one thing care for a partner or friend with a hip replacement, another to support one with a terminal diagnosis. Hope is like oxygen: when you have it, it lifts even low days, and without it, you struggle to even breathe. As I write, I think of Susan K., who died of breast cancer. Even when she knew all options had been exhausted, she did not, as her husband Ben told me, "want friends to think there was no hope". But when we met in a café, she gestured widely, a movement that flung her wedding ring off her finger. We exchanged a look. She said, "What's left to do is finish things with Ben." She gave me many gifts of friendship; her final one was candour. I was as close to him as to her. Ben had been quietly mourning this impending loss while he tried to preserve norma...
