Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: aging in community

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

 I've seen references to the community challenges of caring for people who are 
increasingly less able physically. 

I would raise a different question (and this is relevant in our community where 
a number of us -- some of the most active members -- are 60-70-80 years old). 
What about the potential loss of mental abilities? We already see some mental 
decline in an older member who had a stroke: they process information more 
slowly, get easily confused, may insist on a point of view that the rest of us 
see as clearly out of line with the facts. We have repeatedly found ourselves 
in a situation where we lacked consensus not because this one person disagreed 
with the proposal, but because they simply didn't understand it yet. And 
weren't willing to consent to what they hadn't understood. This is frustrating, 
and somewhat demoralizing for those who've worked hard to get a proposal to 
where there are no substantive objections to it. 

So what if we get to the point where several of us aren't catching on or aren't 
making sense? I'd like to think that, if it were me, I'd say, "Gee, I don't 
understand, but all these people I trust think it's ok, so it must be." (I 
already do this for some of the financial stuff!) But if I really weren't 
firing on all cylinders, that might not be how I'd react. 

We have younger members too, but I can see how it would be a major problem to 
have even two or three members who couldn't think straight. 

Any thoughts on this? Interventions? '

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
Port Townsend WA
RoseWind Cohousing -- long built, and quite functional: so far!