INTERIORS: ELDERS' LIVES ALONE, TOGETHER AND ON THEIR OWN TERMS

Professionals in aging tend to focus on external issues: how to best provide health and social services to the rapidly aging population, how to improve housing so elders can remain safely at home for as long as possible, or how best to enhance elders' lives by making mental health programs accessible or evaluating their living and social support systems. In this "In Focus" section, however, Aging Today takes an interior view, looking not at housing or facilities but at the emotional lives of older people as they experience changes in their primary relationships. The experts writing for this issue report research findings and observations in practice that often defy conventional wisdom. Some couples who grow old along with each other find the best was not to be. Fortunately, there is a role for professionals in aging to help long-married partners find a path to a different "best" than their expectations had previously allowed.

Also, many among the rapidly growing number of elders living alone--especially women, who outlive men in the United States by almost seven years--do not suffer from relentless loneliness. One article in this section is by octogenarian Lillian E. Troll, who describes her pathway to living late life on her own terms. She expresses concerns, of course, but her buoyant reflections suggest that the prospects of old age--even for those of us in the field of aging--are realized as much from within as from the things made available by programs or others. Troll seems to share the perspective of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver. In her poem "Wild Geese," Oliver wrote, "Whoever you are/no matter how lonely,/ the world offers itself/to your imagination,/calls to you like the wild geese,/harsh and exciting--/over and over/announcing your place in/the family of things." *

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