Aging with Spirit #2: Intergenerational Mentoring

By Ellen Ryan

In our later years, we naturally develop a sense of Generativity, the desire to invest in the lives of younger generations, to harvest lessons we have learned through experience.

Grandparenting tends to be a joyful way for contributing to the development of our own progeny. As well, there are many other ways in which we can mentor younger people: students, new parents, fellow work colleagues, fellow athletes, etc. Also, we can pass along lessons to those going through difficulties similar to our own: the newly bereaved, chronically ill, immigrants learning a new language and culture.

My first mentor in the interdisciplinary field of Aging and Health was Sister St Michael Guinan, a nun who had taught at Brescia College. After retirement at age 65, she then served 25 years as Consultant on Aging for the Ontario government.

Sr St Michael Guinan, about as old as the century, befriended me in the late 1980’s and early 90’s.  I was entering the field when psychological research on aging was focused on the process of decline.  In subsequent decades, research and our western culture have become much more attuned to the gains and diversity of the aging experience.

As conveyed in my poem about her below, Sr St Michael was a force of nature, even though diminished by illness. A retired professor and advisor to the Ontario government on policies for seniors, she was still exemplifying how later life is an age of wisdom, a time of harvesting excellence and passing on the legacy to younger generations.

“The Third Age [is] an age of wisdom, an age of Erickson’s fully developed generativity or love, an age of free choice of voluntary service for society, an age of expressing the identity discovered and developed through the previous life stages, an age of true in-dependence, that is dependence upon the Spirit’s voice – indeed the age of harvesting personal and social excellence.”

Sr St. Michael Guinan, 1991

 

Ninety-years old, wrinkles

crease her face, yet

she engages with young people

attuned to our heart’s intent

 

First gerontology conference

she welcomes me – capable recruit

shapes my aspirations

enhances the intrigue

 

Stooped over two canes

she sails into a room like a tall ship

beckoning to learners, colleagues

commanding our attention

 

Frail, shrunken by bone cancer

she moves with grace

yielding to a wheelchair only

after active impressions solidify

 

Blind, she listens to each of us

remembers our goals

talks with us as though

we have already achieved them 

 

Snoring during talks

she is first to ask

perceptive questions

 

Blind, her eyes no longer useful

She sees me, enables me to grow

eventually into an aging mentor