Uneven Aging: When friendships falter

Uneven Aging is an occasional series that explores the situation of a healthier partner who supports an afflicted partner or friend.

While Marlene's husband, Steve, recovers at home from a stroke, his balance remains wobbly and he tires easily. And, as Marlene joked, there was now another woman in his life: his physiotherapist.

Marlene is on the go from the moment Steve rises, as early as 5 a.m.. She can sometimes meet friends for lunch, but confirms only an hour before, because she never knows when Steve will have a day that's especially trying, and if alone and bored he sometimes attempts something unsafe, like climbing a ladder to change the furnace filter. (Emergency room, six stitches to his crown.)

Uneven Aging affects not only a couple, but their life beyond. Marlene has felt several friends from her neighbourhood drift away over the past year; she called herself "desperate for their attention" when I dropped in with a few holiday treats. I left thinking, Can I do something constructive about this?

But Marlene was ahead of me; she invited five friends to her home for lunch. She ordered quiche from a nearby bakery, made a few salads, bought a pie. Tired of hearing the empty "We must have lunch sometime", she took charge.

 Marlene timed the lunch to coincide with a an afternoon hockey game for Steve. As she cleared the dishes afterwards, he asked, "Do the big girls want to play with you again?" They did; when Marlene opened her home, it seemed to open their hearts.

I saw again how bringing friends closer reengages the relationships, or most of them. 

So what happened after that lunch? Of the five women who came, she had three solid invitations. Gerri heard Marlene say that she had not had a proper haircut for months and mentioned that her stylist made house calls if two clients booked, so they did that and liked it so much they agreed to continue. Christine said that she learned about an evening knitting group almost next door and wondered if Marlene could get away. (Yes, evenings are the best time for her to go out.)  

Louise noticed Marlene had received a mind-bending 5, 000-piece puzzle for Christmas and wondered if she could come over and work on it with her—and Marlene set a firm date right away. (She didn't use the commitment-killer reply "Sure, any time.")  Rosa, enroute to a two-month stay in Portugal, promised to join the hairstylist appointments and asked if Louise would like to attend her granddaughter's spring concert in early March.

That left Lee, who stayed silent as she surveyed the couple's living room: a walker, grab bars, a Lazy Boy where an elegant wing chair once sat. I thought of my mother, who would say, "You can't ask someone to give more than they have."  Marlene will continue to include Lee in her friend circle, but isn't counting on her reciprocity.

Marlene had developed the healthier partner's inevitable assumption that when Steve recovered, her ties would too. That can happen, but relationships need tending, and Uneven Aging naturally demands the majority of attention flows to the afflicted partner. When friends step back, another unconscious effect may be in play: infirmity is a reminder of mortality, denial that this happens to all may present as avoidance.  

Coffee or even a solid phone conversation keeps us connected. In Uneven Aging, the healthier partner is  distracted by a flood of tasks, appointments, recalibrations. If she is naturally reserved (Marlene describes herself as "introverted, for a librarian", which she once was), initiating an activity takes extra effort.

I have admired Marlene for over thirty years for her quiet strength and ability to ask herself, How might I solve this? I saw her take charge when she and Steve faced infertility and adopted infant siblings, and twenty years ago when the job she loved vanished and she re-trained as a data analyst. I see her now, in her seventies, facing Steve's recovery with the same steady resolve. 

In the mid-'90s Marlene gave me a card with a quote from Kahlil Gibran, which read, "Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity."

I had to look up this aphorism, but clearly she remembers.