Older adults often experience loneliness due to factors like retirement, limited mobility, and the deaths of their peers. Author Simon Van Booy’s novel “Sipsworth” portrays an older woman who is lonely and alone — until she forms a connection with a mouse and adopts it as a pet. Mayo Clinic geriatrician Dr. Erum Jadoon tells us about the serious health consequences of isolation — and we discuss the richness, beauty and joy that social connection can bring at any age.
Episode summary: Older adults often experience loneliness due to factors like retirement, limited mobility, and the deaths of their peers. Author Simon Van Booy’s novel “Sipsworth” portrays an older woman who is lonely and alone — until she forms a connection with a mouse and adopts it as a pet. Mayo Clinic geriatrician Dr. Erum Jadoon tells us about the serious health consequences of isolation — and we discuss the richness, beauty and joy that social connection can bring at any age.
This episode was made possible by the generous support of Ken Stevens.
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Dr. Denise Millstine:Welcome to the “Read. Talk. Grow.” podcast, where we explore health topics through books. Our topic for this episode is aging and social isolation. Our book today is “Sipsworth” by Simon Van Booy. I'm your host, Dr. Denise Millstine. I'm an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, where I practice women's health, internal medicine, and integrative medicine.
My guests today are our author, Simon Van Booy, who's the award-winning best-selling author of more than a dozen books for adults and children, including “The Illusion of Separateness” and “The Presence of Absence.” Simon is the editor of three volumes of philosophy and has written for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, and others. He was raised in rural North Wales and currently lives in New York. Simon, welcome to the show.
Simon Van Booy: Thank you. Lovely to be here.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Our medical expert guest is Dr. Erum Jadoon. She's a geriatrician, internist and an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. She's on faculty with the Academy of Communication and Healthcare and teaches communication to Mayo Clinic faculty, physicians in training, and medical students. Erum, welcome back to the show.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Thank you. My honor.
Dr. Denise Millstine:“Sipsworth” is a gentle novel about Helen Cartwright, who has returned to the village where she grew up after living for decades overseas, then losing the two people who she felt made her life worth living. In her 80s, she develops a regular, if somewhat uninteresting, routine while she waits for her days to come to an end. After bringing a discarded aquarium into her home, she finds and befriends a mouse who manages to crack her world open.
Okay, you both know how “Read. Talk. Grow.” works. We discuss books that portray health conditions in an effort to better understand health experiences through story. In this case, we'll discuss social isolation with a particular focus on how it affects people as they age.
Simon, your bio in the book jacket notes that you rescued your first mouse in 2020. Was that the major inspiration for Helen and her unexpected friend?
Simon Van Booy: Well that was sort of the spark that lit the fire. So yeah, it actually, it was, I suppose because, Helen is based on, you know, a mix of different people I've known in my life. You know, people in their 70s and 80s. But actually living with a mouse and caring for a mouse and you know, learning how he likes to be woken up and, you know, does he prefer blackberries or blueberries? You know, the way you know, you would treat any guest that really sort of inspired, sort of a deep dive into, you know, relationships with animals and how they can be quite healing.
Dr. Denise Millstine: And you seem to have become the voice for mice as well, because many people think of pets as dogs and cats and maybe ferrets and gerbils. But mice are pets as well, aren't they?
Simon Van Booy: Yeah they are. You know, most New Yorkers spend a large part of their time trying to get mice out of their apartments. But so they’re the ones who want to bring them in, they're in the minority.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: It was interesting for me to read the little particulars of the mouse behavior that generated a feeling of trust or a feeling of happiness. It was remarkable how you captured that in the book, almost as if I could see the mouse right in front of my eyes.
Simon Van Booy: Well, that's kind of you to say. You know what? I'm almost ashamed to admit that the mouse was sort of right there at my desk when I was working. Some people might say, well, did a paw touch the keyboard? I mean, did you write this book or is this sort of like, you know, with the mouse on the keyboard, like typing away, you know?
Dr. Denise Millstine: Well, all authors do research, so this is just your own form of research, sitting him in front of you and writing what you see. Erum, I'm really curious about your reaction to the book and particularly its first line that says, “Helen Cartwright was old, with her life broken in ways she could not have foreseen.”
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Yes, it was interesting when I started to read the book, I felt grief. There were in the beginning pages of the book, things I can completely relate with my own life. And as the book unfolded, I felt myself drawn more and more into the character, and it just started to unfold in very unexpected ways. But when I first started reading the book, I felt, for lack of better terms, almost a feeling of despair, a feeling of hopelessness, almost, and sadness. Deep, profound sadness, a grief, a loss. So it was delightful how it unfolded.
Dr. Denise Millstine: And as a geriatrician is this something you see in your patients, particularly when they find themselves losing loved ones or living alone?
Dr. Erum Jadoon: So true. You know, I have patients that are anywhere between the ages of 65, all the way to 100, 101 and 102. And one of the common themes that I get from my patients that are above the age of 90 particularly, but is the fact that they always tell me life is good. It seems almost always these patients have a sense of their cup being half full, but they say they're greatest grief or their greatest sadness is that all the people that they loved or cared for are gone.
The hardest thing when I ask them, I always expect that they'll tell me about their creaky joints or their back, or having to ask for help, or being dependent, or being fearful, or having to deal with doctor appointments. But no, they always come back to the same thing, that their greatest sadness is that they lose the people they love. That is for them, the hardest thing.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I think that's quite remarkable because probably in their medical chart, the list of problems or diagnoses are things like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and loneliness is so important. And yet we don't often give it that type of credit or emphasis in how we talk about patients.
Simon, at the beginning, at least when we meet Helen, you make her completely forgettable. You say, “Not a single person who glimpsed her bony figure could say they knew her. She was simply part of the background.” This happens to many people as they age, or come to a time when their life retracts in, doesn't it?
Simon Van Booy: Yeah, I think so. And you know, anybody over the I mean, anyone over 30 is invisible to a child, you know, or they're just in that group of like, older people. I mean, when you're born, your parents are destined to always be old, you know? And the idea of imagining your parents having a life before you were born is a strange concept that usually comes to us in adulthood. I had never met a child who was actively interested in asking a parent, you know, what did it feel like when you were 7? Like, or just sort of aware that the parent was at some point, you know, not confident and immature and perhaps impulsive and, you know, made unwise decisions. In fact, probably if it hadn't been for and wise decisions, many others wouldn't have been born.
Dr. Denise Millstine: So true.
Simon Van Booy: When I was quite young, you know, maybe 10 or 11, I had a paper route. And it's not like in the U.S. where it's actually fun, you know, you get to throw the papers and try and break something in somebody’s yard or hit the car or something. In the U.K., you actually have to get off your bicycle, go up to the front door and actually put the newspaper through a letterbox, which is sort of like a little mouth in the door.
And one of my, one of my beats was a housing block of probably about 25, 30, like small, you know, condos, one bedrooms. And it was the only people who lived there, I noticed, were men of a certain age. And you know, who, as a ten-year-old, I would have considered to be old men. But now, you know, I'm 50. I'm not sure I consider them old at all. They were always awake when I got there about 6:00 in the morning, and as I was squeezing the newspaper through the letterbox, the door would open and I'd be confronted by, you know, a different man. You know, there were different men of all sizes living there, and some had mustaches and some had some were bald, some were big, some were small, some were skinny. Some, you know, lit their pipe the moment they woke up.
And as soon as I opened the door, the hallway just smelled of pipe smoke and fire because they would light fires, you know, in the fireplace and leather and then a whiff of whiskey or brandy and shoe polish. So this was a really a different generation of, of men. And what they did have in common was that their shoes were always polished. They always had a tie on. And they were always doing something that's bad for you, like frying bacon or smoking or like, or drinking. But they were all incredibly kind.
And as soon as I got there, they'd say, good, good. Come in, come in. You must be hungry. Sit down. Eat. You know, I suppose you don't smoke a pipe, it’s cigarettes at your age. And I’d say, no, no, I am not allowed to smoke. And they said, well, I started at 10 and never did meet any harm, did it? You know, they were just completely oblivious to -- I can’t imagine trying to explain the idea of a statin to one of them, you know. But you know, they were really kind to me in a way where they didn't know me and they were just lovely, strong men who I felt I could rely on and ask for advice. And, you know, at Christmas, they always gave me a little present, sometimes a thing of tobacco or some alcohol or chocolate.
And later on, you know, when the place had closed down and it was being converted into something else. I found out that it was actually a government housing for veterans of the Battle of Britain. So they were all Spitfire pilots from World War II from the RAF.
So I think that if they hadn't lived together, you know, as veterans. I think it would have been very difficult for them, knowing what we know now about things like PTSD. So, you know, some of those men are in the book somehow in Helen's attitude, the idea that you just keep going, you know, no matter what happens.
Dr. Denise Millstine: As is -- and we won't ruin the book. We never ruin the book, If we can help it. As is this idea that you meet this person at this advanced age, where they really have pulled back into this quiet life, and you have no idea what they have accomplished earlier like these pilots and listeners are going to have to read “Sipsworth” to find out what Helen had done with her career, which was quite remarkable before we see her as this lonely, aging woman, sort of waiting for the end to come.
Erum, I wonder if you'll talk about despair. So Helen describes her despair at being alone, saying, “She came to the realization that such feelings were simply the condition of old age, and largely the same for everybody.” Does despair affect everyone at this age, or is it just very common?
Dr. Erum Jadoon: It's very interesting how Helen is with her everyday routine, especially in the beginning of the book. I could completely understand, or at least try, I was empathic because, for example, she writes that, “Just as she had been singled out for happiness, she was now an object of despair.” And another passage that stood out was, “Everyone she has ever loved or wanted to love is gone and behind a veil of fear, she wishes to be where they are. Old age and largely, it's largely the same for everybody. There is no escape.”
And so when I was looking at reading this and reflecting on my own clinical encounters, a couple of things were coming to my mind. It actually, you know, holds true that a lot of my patients that I see in the clinic, especially when they are entering into their 70s and 80s, start to grapple with the realization that they are getting lonelier and lonelier. Their loved ones are gone or going away, or they start to hear or read in the paper that their best friend, or somebody they knew from childhood has passed away. And it starts to weigh on them in a way that I can't even imagine.
I think I actually can recall a patient from last week telling me that he was fine, but he was just down because he keeps reading about people he knows that are passing away, and he feels alone. Doesn't want to do things. And so then we start the discussion of what can be done with everyday routines to try to bring in some activity, some socialization, even therapy, reminiscence therapy.
Unfortunately, what I'm seeing in the clinic pretty much reflects the national data. In 2023, the Surgeon General did give a warning that at least for and it's different for different countries, different in the United Kingdom, I'm sure. But in the United States, there is an epidemic of loneliness. And how loneliness affects both genders women and men, but in particular men.
So I do see it more in my 70s patients, 80s patients, and for sure by the time my patients are in their 90s doing really good, they have this acute sense of loss. And yet that is not the only thing that defines them. It does not. And a lot of their everyday life is full of enrichment and happiness and things that bring them joy. I think that is one of the remarkable traits of my patients who are doing well in their later years. Is the joy that they find in little things.
But there is no doubt that loneliness is for sure pretty horrific feeling, in fact for many of the patients, which is not very unlike Helen’s story.
Dr. Denise Millstine: And with your patient last week, did you prescribe a mouse?
Dr. Erum Jadoon: As a matter of fact, one of the things that I prescribe my patients is having a pet, not particularly a mouse, I have to admit, but a pet. And they often tell me that will outlive them and what will happen if they pass and the pet is still there. And I always counteract that argument by saying, you can always adopt an older pet. You don't have to get a puppy. So. So I get in the last word.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Excellent. Excellent advice. I am hoping that on that list is adding a mouse, perhaps.
You know Simon, we see Helen doing her schedule and sitting down to watch the television, or just to take a rest for a minute and regularly dozing off, typically accidentally. She's not laying down to take a nap. She just sits to rest and chill. She'll doze off. She often then dreams about people she's lost or earlier times. Can you tell us about this part of her life?
Simon Van Booy: When I was in art school, I worked part time at a nursing home. And pretty soon after learning the ropes there, I thought, this isn't, so this isn't on my schedule at college. Like, why aren't we learning anything like this? This is this seems like the vital that you should know what happens as you age and yet we're learning about, you know, Keats and Wordsworth. A it just seems like a sort of an accepted conceit when you know, certain vital things like, you know, if we're lucky, what the future has in store, sort of go on unrecognized.
I also, when I moved to the U.S., so I learned a lot about, you know, the people I grew to care for and love. You know, it's just basic daily tasks. I mean, I was the young person who was there who knew nothing and, messed everything up. But to see people who were decorated with Ph.D.s not able to feed themselves and things like that. It really made me think. It really gave me a, a much deeper sense of compassion for like, the human condition. And the sense that my God, we're all sort of fools in a way. We're all, you know, we're animals. So it really just completely reshaped my life, my view of life.
And then when I moved to the U.S., I had a mentor, a writing mentor, who was in her how old was she? She would have been in her late 70s. And she read something of mine in a local newspaper, and she got, she harassed the editor to get my phone number and called me and said, I'd like to speak to Simon, you know, Van Booy. And so I came to the phone and I was a student, a graduate student, and, she said, did you write the story in last week's newspaper? I said, yes, she says, oh, good. She said, well, meet me at the American Hotel at 2 p.m. next Thursday. Can you do that? And I said, yeah. She said, okay, bye bye. And that was it.
And so curiosity sort of got the better of me. And I went there and Barbara was, in her own right. She was a celebrated author. She wrote young adult books for young adults, and she was really the first one, the first writer to focus, like, you know, to focus on queer characters and to, to to tackle, like, body issues and stuff like that. This was in the 70s and 80s and nobody was doing it. And she also was a reviewer for The New York Times.
Anyway, her lover Zoe, who was 10, 12 years her senior, had died a few years before and I suppose, to mitigate the loneliness, Barbara had set up a very small publishing press, where she publish, I know, 100 copies of the 20 page book, and then she would walk around to local bookshops and try and get them to carry the book. And so any writer that sort of, you know, picked her fancy, she would sort of call them and see if they had any work she could publish. And so that was keeping her busy in Zoe's absence.
But, you know, she'd say, I'd say things like, what are you doing this weekend, Barbara? And she'd say, isn't it obvious, waiting to die? And then she'd constantly tell me things like, you know, I've lived my life, you know, if it wasn't for the pacemaker, I'd be dead. And that's nature wanted me to be dead. But I'm still alive, so I've outlived the time.
You know, so she had this idea that she should have died before, and, she was just sort of killing time, and, she taught me how to edit and how to. She taught me a lot about the business, and she helped me with my work and she really was, like, a major figure in my life. And as she got older, she started to, you know, show signs of dementia.
Once she called me and she said, I need you to come over because the carpet is trying to kill me. And you know, and she was convinced that there was a toxic element to the carpet. And she said, you know, I've looked at ways to kill myself. She says, but I'm worried about leaving my teddy bear. She always had a teddy bear out, you know, from childhood. And she said, I don't know. I mean, she said, I just can't really do it anyway, you know? She started to become paranoid and she didn't trust anybody.
And, eventually I was able to get her, facilitate her move into a place called the Actor's Home in New Jersey, which is a nursing home for people who've been in show business. It's part of something called the Entertainment Community Fund, which is a…Joe Benincasa, who runs that, there’s a special place in heaven for him because so many thousands, you know, of all the people who've lost everyone, they've got no money, there's a place for them to feel like they're recognized.
So when I went there to visit with Barbara, you know, there was somebody in the lobby playing show tunes on the piano. And, you know, Barbara had a same sex partner, so but at the Actors Home, it was perfectly fine. Yeah, it was completely accepted. Unfortunately, she didn't really socialize because her mental condition had put her past the point really. She just stayed in her room, and I'd visit and she'd look at me and she'd say, well, thank you for coming but you should probably go. And then, you know, she just lost more and more of her memory. But it really was the isolation of losing Zoe, I think that sort of was one of the things that I think shortened her life.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Hey listeners, we hope you're enjoying this episode of “Read. Talk. Grow.” If you find our discussions helpful and insightful, please take a moment to subscribe to and rate “Read. Talk. Grow.” on your preferred podcast platform and don't forget to tell your friends to listen. Your support will help us reach more readers and those eager to learn about health through books. As always, feel free to drop us a line at readtalkgrow@mayo.edu with suggestions for books, topics or any comments. Thanks for listening.
Dr. Denise Millstine: How lucky was she to have a community that literally had these people living together side by side, even though she wasn't participating as much as she could have had she been able to find that community earlier. We see with Helen, Erum, that she is similarly secluded and then enters Sipsworth. And Sipworth’s presence really brings her into connection with people in town. Whether it's people who are at the library or the man who works at the hardware store. So would you agree that it's just these small changes that then have the potential to crack a world open?
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Absolutely. There is a cascade or domino effect that happens with one leading to another, leading to another, and there is very well studied and evidence that shows people who end up doing volunteer work, for example, after they retire, end up living longer, happier lives. So having a sense of purpose, having a sense of something to do that keeps one going, compared to perhaps retiring, not having a hobby or a pastime that they have worked on from before, suddenly leaves, gives them a void that they cannot fill. It's a potentially very dangerous time where this is the crossroads of either going ahead and doing something to stay involved or staying isolated.
This is one of the most important key points that I actually review with my residents and fellows and medical students with the care of older adults, is the fact that isolation is probably one of the biggest issues affecting people and reducing their not only quality of life, or taking away the life out of their years, but the years out of their life as well.
And it has a cascading effect. So isolation leads to feelings of depression, which in turn leads to there is less desire to move, which results in a lower amount of muscle mass. And when there is lesser muscle mass, there is less desire to move, lower immunity, more problems with sugar metabolism, falls, fractures, and a general cascade or spiral towards frailty and worsening outcomes.
It is truly a spiral, and part of this work is also from my background in communications and in healthcare is also that we are programed to be social animals. When we are sitting across from another person, whether this is a friend, a colleague, a patient, we will internalize whatever emotion we are seeing and mirror it, even unknowingly. And so if we don't get that socialization that we are programed to get because of the way modern life has evolved, it results in dire consequences with your health. And this is not just the mood part, but also the physical part.
This is a pretty complex concept to understand, but it is also a very, very simple concept to understand. And as a matter of fact, if we look into this with a slightly different lens, you realize that there is so many books and interest on this out there with different topics and different titles. For example, the famous, you know, the Blue Zones book that came out with National Geographic, with the first article that was published, I think it was probably in the 1980s when it first came out and there have been different versions of that since then, including the longest longevity study on humans from Harvard. They are actually studying the class of 1937, 1938, and they are trying to figure out why some people live all the way into their 90s and are feeling fine, whereas there are others that succumb in their 60s or 70s. And the biggest difference in the longevity study in the blue zones, and pretty much wherever we look, is the fact that people who maintain social connections and have a feeling on sense of support through significant other close friends, sense of community, tend to live longer, happier, better lives. And it goes in line with our evolution as a species.
So I'm sorry it was a long winded explanation.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Well I just like the bidirectionality of it. We think of this spiraling effect as loneliness, less movement, becoming more ill, moving even less, being at higher risk for fall, which can be a major life effect. But the first thing you said is this domino effect. So Helen didn't set out to find a pet. She accidentally ended up carrying a mouse into her home, and that also can have a domino effect, where that openness to extending your heart to another living being can then lead to the next connection, the next connection, the next connection.
So I like the hope that comes from, there is this spiral of decreasing health. But then there's also the potential for these small changes to really stack up and cause this big domino effect, which is much bigger than the single choice.
Because Simon, Helen didn't mean to have a pet. She didn't go out into the street to see if she could find a random mouse that she then would bring into her home. So it was a pure accident. And when she starts to think about having a container for him, that is something besides just her sink. She goes to the local hardware store. She meets a man who becomes very important in her circle of friends, and she says she wants to take care of a mouse. He immediately introduces her or immediately shows her his wall of mousetraps, which she is offended by, and asks him, you know, if he has a container which eventually ends up being the aquarium. And then she pauses and starts to think, well, if I want to protect this mouse, even go so far as to think, should I be eating meat? Should I be eating animals? Can you talk about how you let that cascade of events develop in the novel?
Simon Van Booy: That's a lovely thing to ask. Well, you know, Helen is is a really, really intelligent person. She was actually she was very difficult to write because not being an intelligent person, to write somebody more intelligent, it's hard, it's challenging.
But, you know, she has this sort of mind where, you know, she's scrutinized as what she says. She looks for the ambiguity and she maybe she's amused by it. Maybe she dismisses, you know, I mean, she dismisses her idea. I mean, she's really as a first-class mind, I think. And so if she is able to bond with a mouse in a very deep way, in the same way that she bonded with a child, her child, you know. And it's possible that a cow or a pig or a chicken is equal to bond with them in a similar way. You know, where we can give and receive love. Do we have a moral obligation not to eat them? I mean, I suppose the argument for eating meat is that we need to eat meat, but I think that vegetarians actually live longer than meat eaters. And, you know, millions of people in India are living perfectly good lives, not eating meat. I think she gets to a point where she takes meat products from her kitchen, buries them in the garden in the way that you bury a body.
Which, you know, anyone watching might think, well, that woman's really losing it. I mean, look, she's burying stuff from the kitchen, but actually, she's never had more clarity. She's never been more honest with herself.
You know, Charles Dickens said, there's no deceiver so great as the self-deceiver from “Great Expectations” you know? So, Helen, really, you know, her finding this mouse has fired up Helen's mind again. And, you know, over the years what Dr. Jadoon said is just so perfectly true. The answer is so simple and yet so in some ways out of reach. You know, where over the years, I've noticed older people just volunteering for the most bizarre things. So, for instance, you know, some relatives will come over and, you know, maybe the man is in his late 70s and, you know, the kettle's on and the cakes are being put out, and then suddenly we see a ladder going up outside and we're like, What's James doing? Oh, he's decided to clean up the gutters. But you came over for tea. No, no, don't try and argue with isn't. He's going to be up there for the next two hours cleaning out the gutters. And it's awkward. And people would say, come on, come down. But he needs to do that because. And when my father-in-law says, you know, maybe I could come over and help put those shelves up. Now, I realized that it's part of caring for them, that you accept them to do tasks, things that they know how to do and they're good at.
Yeah, I think the worst thing I could say to a sort of person, an elderly person, is to not allow them to do something because I'm worried about their age.
That anybody listening, you know, if you know anybody in their 70s and 80s and you have some DIY to do, like he has a lot of help waiting, you just have to ask. So keeping busy and of course, Helen's primary role in her life has been care. You know, she cared for the patients and she had a son and her husband. Of course, the irony being that she couldn't save her husband and now she's forced back into that role. I mean, I think she wakes up at some point in the night and says, oh my God, having a mouse is like having a baby. You just can't leave them alone. You have to supervise them. They don't know what they're doing. All they want to do is cuddle and sleep and poop and she realizes then that she can't die because if she does, the mouse will be alone and will almost certainly die in her absence.
It's uncomfortable at first, but she's being forced back into what she knows so well, which is the role of a carer. As you said, she does have to start now seeking help in the community. Anne Michaels, a writer I admire greatly, she once said in one of her books that sometimes you have to give what you most need, and I've always thought that might apply to this book.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Actually, Simon, hearing you say that reminds me of some of the things that we employ for our patients with cognitive impairment. Is to give them back their routines or the things that they would do when they were younger, productive stuff that they felt proud of. So for a lot of our older patients that have problems with behavior, because problems with behavior meaning not really problems, but more like certain outbursts of emotion, and when they are put in a tight schedule where they don't want to do certain things or they want to do things their own way, to mitigate some of that is to allow them to do the things that they've always enjoyed doing.
So giving a doll, for example, I have older ladies who love dressing up the doll, taking care of its hair. Or I know, for example, a patient of mine who is happiest when she has a big pile of clothing and she puts it in the laundry, then puts it in the dryer and folds it meticulously, and when she's bored, she's unhappy and pacing and not eating, or her day and night gets all messed up. But when her daughter gives her these piles of clothing, she just loves taking care of that and is just more peaceful.
Simon Van Booy: That's so interesting.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Yeah, this is in people who really have advanced dementia. One of the things that I also keep trying to emphasize with my patients and their families is, that if your mom or dad has joy in going out into the garden or gardening was their most favorite thing, and they can't do that anymore, make sure you get some planters that are easy for them to access so they can play around in the dirt. Put some seeds down there, take care of that little garden because it gives them a sense of accomplishment, a purpose, and that's very useful, very, very important.
Simon Van Booy: Such wonderful advice. Yeah, that's wonderful advice. You know, I see it in everyday situations as well. You know, when, for instance, somebody will ask all the family members, can you drive David to ballet practice or something, you know, and they show up in a suit an hour early and they're waiting in the curb and the car's cleaned, you know, and it's like they've got something to do.
You know, some of some friends I have who are writers who, you know, made a significant amount of money from writing. It's funny, but, you know, you think that that would increase their level of satisfaction and happiness. But I found the inverse is true. The fact that now they, you know, they don't have to write another book and they can sort of go, oh, they can go to Tahiti for a week if they want. You know, it doesn't matter. This is sort of ennui and boredom that sets in.
When you hear about people who've made a fortune and then lost it, and they're thrilled that they've lost it, because now they get to try and make it again. I really feel I see that, you know, wisdom being really valuable for older people.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Yes. I think it's the human condition, like the fable of, I think I'm going to mispronounce I, Sisyphus, where he's rolling that heavy ball up the hill. Yeah. And then it rolls all the way back down. Maybe he's actually enjoying all that struggle because it gives him structure and something to do.
Simon Van Booy: You know, that's a profoundly interesting thing. The idea that Sisyphus might have been happy. I really think there's a great wisdom in that. You know, I think absolutely.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: I almost take that into my own life because I remember there was a time when my children were little and I was given the choice of going part time. And the question was, if I do part time work, do I do three or four or five half days versus two full days and have three days completely off? And I immediately grasped at the idea of having five half days, because I was so frightened at the prospect of not having structure in the three days, even though I have to take care of the kids, take them to school, whatever.
But the prospect of not having structure and something to do which gave me purpose, a reason for me to get up, have my coffee, be dressed, go to work and come back was just frightening. I thought I would lose my purpose and balance because I need that structure.
Simon Van Booy: Yeah, that's so interesting.
Dr. Denise Millstine: It reminds me of Helen with her pattern and schedule, which I called in the introduction. Not very interesting. It's based around what's on the television when she's going to eat her special treat, what time she's going to go to bed. But once you add Sipsworth into the equation, you have her spark. What you said, Simon, is, I think, her core value of being somebody who can be caring and indeed, when Sipsworth has a health crisis of sorts, she can really tap into what you've referred to as those old skills that maybe on the surface, seeing this older person going out to the curb in front of their house, you would have no idea they had this ability to do these really remarkable things from their early training. And now, because she's able to pull that forward and make a difference in this being's life, it is really what opens her to how wonderful life can still be, even with all she has lost. Do you agree?
Simon Van Booy: Absolutely. And you know, at first it's just so uncomfortable. I mean, a few weeks ago, the inevitable happened here in our apartment in New York, and we had an infestation of mice. I was at my desk and I looked down. I saw a little face gray, a little gray head looking at me, and I said, well, you've definitely come to the right apartment because you're not going to be killed here. This is a murder free zone. And then I heard a scream from the other room when my wife was on a zoom, and I realized we might have more than one because I could tell this mouse was a pup. So probably only three weeks old. And so, you know, we, I built I got busy with my toolkit and built a little storage container and with a recreation area and sort of a place to sleep, like the mice of Orange County, you know.
Then I got to, you know, those humane traps where you catch them live, you. But, you know, because they're pups, they sometimes, they're not heavy enough to spring the door. So I had to take out my calculator and figure out the weight differential and how to compensate for that with Cheerios, if you have a three week old mouse, you need to put three and a half Cheerios into the spring loaded humane trap. Otherwise they'll just walk in and walk out like it's, you know, an automat.
You know, my wife and I spent three weeks catching mice, and then we caught the mom, and we found a community garden where we could illegally release them, you know, enough food for a few days while they build a new shelter. And you know at first, it was an enormous inconvenience because we knew we were going to have to disinfect the floors and things like that and we didn't know if it would ever end. But then we started to sort of like it, and we started to wonder now whenever we're sitting down and we sort of miss seeing a mouse run across the floor, it's almost a bit sad. Like when our daughter left home to go to college. It's a bit like that, you know? It's like, I wonder if we’ll see a mouse tonight? But hopefully they're living their lives. But I think that any kind of change, for the better, I think people don't expect it to be uncomfortable and painful, but I think it actually change for the good is inevitably uncomfortable at first.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Absolutely, yes.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Such a beautiful way to put that. And if we have listeners who maybe haven't read the book, we hope they will. But I wonder if you each would leave any of our older listeners who find themselves in a state of isolation and less connected, a piece of advice or a piece of wisdom that you'd like to share with them?
Dr. Erum Jadoon: I'll go first. The one thing I would say is do something that you always wanted to do. Do something that brings you joy and you can make it happen in this day and age with modern technology, use technology as your friend. Don't be afraid of it because it can open doors. You can FaceTime your grandchildren across the continent and feel connected with them. Even if you cannot be with them all the time. Having connection and making it a priority is doable and try. There are lots and lots of resources out there. It is normal to be wanting to be with others.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Beautiful.
Simon Van Booy: I suppose for me I'd say that's excellent advice and I'm not a doctor. So you know, take it with a pinch of salt, I would say, think about what you're you've spent your life doing and what you're good at, and then maybe go out into the world with the idea that you'd like to teach somebody or share somebody how to do that.
It's strange that the universe has a way of putting people together at the right time. I think sometimes, and there are enormous amount of young people out there who don't have a strong mother or father figure. They don't have good role models, and there are enormous amount of elderly people out there, that would be fantastic role models. So there it's almost I wish there was a Tinder for like mentors. You know, where like young people who, you know, maybe they're from a family where reading is not a big deal, but they want to get into some sort of like profession where reading is, you know, valued or something. And, and they desperately need a mentor. And I think, yeah, hundreds of years ago in the village, you'd know who was the person to go to talk about, you know, intellectual things and who was the person to go to talk about sword making or, or skins or like, you know, digging foundations for huts. But I think we’re so isolated, because we don't even have to go to restaurants anymore or supermarkets.
In fact, you know, often when we get a delivery of food, it's just left outside the door. I like to say hello to the person and chat to them, you know what I mean. And see what all the gear they're wearing, you know. But sometimes they just leave it and it's almost like we don't have to do anything. We also live with these strange bubbles where our social life is through a screen. And I think that's enormously unfulfilling in the long term.
So I'd say actually go out and do what a writer does, which is spend a hell of a lot of time doing nothing. It makes my wife nervous when she hears me say that, sometimes I'll drive to rural Pennsylvania or Kentucky for four or five days. I'll stay at our local hotel, and I'll just wander around Walmart just two hours at a time, and then I'll go to the local Chinese restaurant and say, is it strange being here, you know, in the middle of Kentucky, being from China, you know. And then I'll go to, I don't know, another shop and ask if I can use the bathroom. Almost like a little pest who's just wandering around chatting to everybody. But the thing is, I've made some really close friends that way. You just meet people who maybe need a bit of help, so I'd say go out and just wander around and get into conversations with random strangers.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I think this is wonderful advice for our listeners who are thinking about this for themselves or their loved ones, that these small changes can make big impacts. And we've had lots of ideas on today's episode. We've been talking about the book “Sipsworth,” that we hope listeners will go out and read, if you haven't already. Thank you both for participating in the conversation.
Simon Van Booy: Oh, thank you so much. I mean, I've never been more excited to be sick or old after seeing you both. I'm looking at your surgery behind you, Denise, and listening to Erum talk about all her experience. I really admire you both so very much and just want to thank you for everything you've done for people over the years.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Thank you.
Dr. Erum Jadoon: Thank you, Simon. Very, very nice to meet you and honored to be chatting with you today. Thank you so much, Denise, for having me.
Dr. Denise Millstine: “Read. Talk. Grow.” is a product of the Women's Health Center at Mayo Clinic. This episode was made possible by the generous support of Ken Stevens. Our producer is Lisa Speckhard Pasque and our recording engineer is Rick Andresen.
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