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 Please
click here to download a podcast of the Chautauqua Institution
lecture |
Chautauqua
Institution, Chautauqua, NY - Audience of 5,000 |
NEWSWEEK by Eleanor Clift "Lecturing this week at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, Sheehy noted that a woman who reaches the age of 50 without evidence of cancer or heart disease can expect to live until 92. There was a rumble of surprised delight, followed by gasps as the audience processed the information. "Whoever prepared us for the possibility we might live long enough to forget the name of our first husband?" Sheehy asked. What happens in later life is not as predictable as the earlier stages, she said. Society is changing, and people are taking longer to grow up and much longer to grow old. There is enormous satisfaction as life gets extended, but there is also illness and loss of independence. Sheehy is currently researching a book on caregivers, a subject she's been living with the last 15 years as her husband, the celebrated editor and founder of New York Magazine, Clay Felker, has battled three separate assaults by cancer. Sheehy lifts the curtain on the army of unpaid and overworked caregivers that she calls "the backbone of our broken health care system."
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Having
chronicled every stage of life, author Gail Sheehy now has insights
on the final stages- from the view of a caregiver.