Life is coming.

[hannah]

My next short-term fic project - 5000 to 20000 words, you know, short-term - will focus on a post-menopausal woman late in her life. To those reading this space who've gone through that process, is there anything of note I should be aware of or make sure to include? It's not a subject where I can extrapolate from personal experience, and most of the stuff I've yet found is fairly sanitized and clinical. Informative, yes, and also clinical. It's not quite what I'm after in terms of getting a hold on emotional thrust.

I'd like to take a stab at long-term love and the work required for that to work in the day-to-day. Knowing what at least one of the main characters has gone through, having lived all those days, would be a big help.

And now that I've asked the internet: time to see what the library's got.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

When is it set? My grandmother (born 1916) was old in her 60s and died in her mid-70s and this was pretty normal. My parents (born 1946) are now a similar age but in a much earlier "life stage", looking after grandchildren, travelling, and are basically fit and healthy. Someone in their 80s now could be anywhere from still working part-time, volunteering and travelling, or they could be quite frail, depending on their life and health. Someone in their 80s thirty years ago would have been very elderly and outlived most or all of their friends.

[linaelyn]

I concur with all of this! The aspect of when-in-history your fix is set could make a huge difference in the person's health, not only their own but in their peers which could effect their emotional health.

[hannah]

It's in the near future. So there's going to be online shopping and chat rooms, but self-driving cars will still be 10 years away from the general consumer public.

[lilacsigil]

I work in healthcare, so I know a lot of people in this age bracket! The ones who are basically healthy are quite active and social, and have a lot of organisations (charity, church, exercise, card games) but they tend to stick close to home because they don't want to drive in unfamiliar environments and travelling is tiring and difficult. There are a lot more women than men. They take a lot of responsibility for their more frail friends, visiting them frequently, picking up medications, taking them places if they can't or won't drive, etc. Some of them still have jobs, though very much part-time - the plumber who helped renovate our house was 83 at the time. He retired and then died a few months later, which is a very common pattern.

They tend to all get up very early and go to bed early as well - that may be because they're almost all retired farmers in my area, but my grandparents were not farmers and they followed the same pattern. By this age they don't tend to be caring for young grandchildren or great-grandchildren by themselves, as it's too difficult physically, but they attend (and fundraise for) a lot of events for their family members; the ones without grandkids tend to accompany their friends or siblings to the kids' events.

[hannah]

I'd known I'd wanted to have the character still involved in long-term projects with an affiliated organization, and while she's not near people, she's stayed in touch with a lot of them. So I'm pleased to know I got that at least somewhat accurate for the sort of thing I'm trying to portray.

[hannah]

It's set in Northern California, Marin/Sonoma, about 50 years from now. She's outlived a number of her old friends, and she's doing what's basically volunteer and consultation work. She gardens a lot.