Jonathan Singer
November 21, 1994
Life Cycles
Concept Note #3
Dr. Ray Hawkins

    As a child, I knew my maternal grandfather (Tom) to be a very distant, strict and authoritative person. This was in contrast to my parents, who had less control over me, and my paternal grandfather (Lou) who would spoil me. One incident exemplifies my impression of Tom. My parents, Tom and I were taking a boat trip. I was watching Tom take pictures and asked if I could see the camera. He said I could look at it, but he would hold it. In no uncertain terms did he tell me I could not push the picture button. In my six year old mind this was a great toy and he had made it into a game. Tom saw it differently. When I pushed the button and took the picture he slapped me. Stunned, I ran to my parents. I did not tell them what had happened because I knew I had done the wrong thing. Had this been out of character for my grandfather I would have told my parents. Since I did not, it must have been congruent with my understanding of him. This helped solidify my childhood impression of Tom as a strict person.

    My grandfather became less strict through dealing with my grandmother (Mary Lu) developing Alzheimer's disease. She was still teaching elementary school math when she started losing her memory in the mid 70's. By 1979 she was having difficulty carrying on conversations. Thanksgiving of 1980 coincided with a period of remission. This brief respite from disease provided me with the first image of my grandfather as a more caring individual. We were sitting at the dinner table and Tom asked Mary Lu if she would mind talking about what was happening to her. This surprised me because we never talked about personal problems at the dinner table. She proceeded to give a calm, coherent description of the loss of her memory, fine motor skills etc. This is notable because it illustrates how my grandfather was flexible enough to change life-long rules to accommodate the second order change.

    As the disease progressed, Tom became more caring and giving. He quit his job as professor of Biology at Davidson College to spend more time caring for my grandmother. When that became too much, he hired a nurse. Always practical, he installed an electric chair that carried Mary Lu up and down the stairs. The last few years of her life, my grandmother sat in her wheelchair and hummed church songs from her childhood. Knowing she was close to death, my grandfather arranged for her to die at Duke University, where they would perform an immediate post-mortem autopsy.

    Today, my grandfather spends his time volunteering, collecting bugs, attending the opera and theater with a senior citizens group and heading the "buddy" program at Davidson College. The latter matches first year students with retired citizens in the community. The time that was once filled with caring for my grandmother is now filled with a host of activities, all of which he enjoys.
 

    One way to understand the changes my grandfather went through is by looking at the psycho-social crisis of generativity vs. stagnation. Between the ages of 35 to 60, people will find themselves "responsible for maintaining the world." (Neuman and Neuman, 1991, p. 554) Their world has settled into a permanent career, life partner, family etc. They are expected to give of themselves to maintain this and the larger world. This is a new and often times daunting task. Like all psycho-social crises, flexibility and adaptation are essential in successful resolution. When this happens, the person is seen as generative or giving. Stagnation occurs when they are overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the world and lack the flexibility to adapt.

    In the years before my grandmother's disease, Tom was very inflexible. In many ways he had already resolved the crisis: He had settled into a predictable, comfortable life. He was successfully raising a family, teaching at a college and doing research to further his field. Like many of his contemporaries, he expressed care and concern through clearly defining rules and not bending them. When I took the picture I broke one of his rules. He did not feel the need to adjust. It took a bigger crisis than my annual visits to challenge his way of being.

    The debilitating nature of my grandmother's disease forced my grandfather to become flexible. He had to quit his job, start doing all the cooking and cleaning and ultimately take care of my grandmother as if she were a baby. He could do these only by changing some rules and breaking others. The central process involved in resolving the psycho-social crisis is an increased interaction between the person and the environment (p. 549) A good example is when he asked Mary Lu to discuss her illness at the dinner table. Traditionally, personal issues were never discussed at the dinner table. The situation had reached a point though, where my grandfather felt it was more important to share what was going on than to adhere to old rules that were made for different circumstances. Tom's flexibility enabled him to rely on the environment to help him cope. As the illness progressed, Tom increased his interaction with the environment by hiring a nurse and getting involved in Alzheimer's support groups.

    Today, Tom balances his time between satisfying personal and external needs, engaging in what Erikson termed grand-generativity. Neuman and Neuman suggest that the ego strength associated with the achievement of generativity is care (p. 546). Tom is taking care of that which he cares for. During my grandmother's illness, Tom stopped donating to the "feed the starving children" funds, a cause which had been important to him all his life. His experience with pain and suffering made him doubt that sustaining miserable living conditions was the best way to give back to the world. Instead of stagnating and deciding there was no way to work towards improving the world, he was flexible and found a way he was comfortable with. Today he volunteers with an organization called SERV, which imports arts and crafts from third-world countries. He sets up times and places to sell the wares and all of the profit goes directly to the artisans. In this way, Tom is maintaining part of the world he cares very much for.

    Today, at age 80, Tom will be dealing with the last psycho-social crisis, immortality vs. extinction. Although that is another paper, we see that generativity is still important. Even though he no longer has the same direct responsibilities, his activities revolve around giving of himself to others. This gives him the opportunity to experience grand-generativity in current relationships. For example, he gave up teaching to care for my grandmother. Instead of ignoring the enjoyment he received from the interaction with the students, he found the "Buddy" program. Now he is teaching the younger generation to be generative through his example.

    In sum, the illness and subsequent death of my grandmother forced my grandfather to change his way of dealing with the world. Although it could be argued that Tom was already engaging in generative activities, this second order change required a reorganization of personal and environmental coping mechanisms which manifests itself in grand-generativity. This is a crucial part in helping him deal with the issues of his own mortality that are the hallmarks of his age.