Supporting the Aging Process in Community

by Marie H. Schutz

I N 1970 A GROUP OF FRIENDS had a series of meetings to explore how we might live our lives in mutual support as the years went by. Some of us were strong social activists, some social theorists, some a blend of those. And a few just had good feelings about the idea. Anywhere from 40 to 60 people came to our meetings.

After about three years we found that a dozen of us were committed to try something like an intentional community. We found a sizable piece of bare land in rural northern California, and bought it, calling our community Monan's Rill. We built roads, a water system, housing, waste-water systems, farm buildings, two community buildings, a wondrous woodshop and cabinet shop for a cottage industry, and a two-acre organic garden which produces all year. We have become a viable community upwards of 35 people ranging in age from infants to 80 years.

We talked for three years about how to create community before we bought the land. Topics included location, housing, cottage industry, conflict resolution, environmental concerns, finances, ceremonies, membership process and governance. Our discussions ranged over as many points of view as you can imagine. We tried hard to describe what we wanted; we wrote about these and other subjects and shared our writings. We developed some ingenious schemes for financial details in the acceptance of new members, keeping costs for younger people lower than for older, for instance. The original group members were in their fifties. Right from the start we were determined to have a wide age-range, including children. Gradually, most of us moved to the surrounding area and continued to build community as we began to build the dwellings.

As time went we discovered on that we all  had hidden agendas--so hidden that most of us didn't know that our own agenda's existed, let along anyone else's. Our process of community-building hit rocky spots--even great boulders--but we persevered. The early recognition that conflict resolution would be necessary helped soften the blows when we tried to put our theories into practice.

We conducted our business as a committee of the whole at first, operating by consensus. We soon developed a committee structure but continued using consensus decision-making. After several years we began to have what we called "Process" meetings and "Issues" meetings. Stewardship, the garden, work, children, buildings, conflict resolution and demographics were all given attention, one at a time. One of the Issues meetings was devoted to the subject of growing older in community.

My recollection of this Meeting on Aging is heartwarming. There was little if any thought that the elders should (or would) leave the community. I don't remember even the least suggestion of it. I do remember that we were encouraged to think of where we'd like to be if we were ill or if we needed to be in a less rugged place. We considered what kind of help we thought we might need as time passed. I remember one of our dear friends saying we should think of what kind of music we'd like to hear if we were terminally ill and which window we'd like to see out of if we were bedridden. The Founders (as we were being called by this time) seemed as much a part of the community as the trees and the deer and the wildflowers. Always practical, we talked about insurance and where important papers were.

We experienced the death of two members in the twenty years we lived in the country and found we were indeed one family. Ours was a community loss, not only a spouse's loss. As we came face to face with one of these imminent departures, we called a meeting early one Sunday morning to share how we felt and how we might respond--both personally and toward the person whose diagnosis of terminal illness had just been confirmed.

She herself came to the meeting, which we hadn't exactly expected. She spoke first in the silent meeting. Her message to us was memorable. She said she was in the place she most wanted to be in the whole world; she was with the people she most wanted to be with, "my beloved community of the past twenty years;" she had lived a good life; and "it's a beautiful springtime." We had no need to search for our own feelings--we needed only to support our beloved friend in the few months ahead. Her life was a gift to us all.

One couple with deteriorating health problems decided for their own comfort and necessity that they would move to Friends House, a new Quaker retirement complex in a town ten miles away. We couldn't and didn't argue, since Monan's Rill is quite hilly with rugged terrain and neither emphysema nor Alzheimer's disease would be easy to manage in such a place.

Several years later three more of our original number had moved to town to the same Quaker complex. As time passed, and my husband and were in our mid-seventies and then closer to eighty--and the "just-right" apartment would soon be available at Friends House--my husband and I realized the burden that a labor-intensive lifestyle was becoming. Still quite healthy and with many interests we felt strongly about, it was clear to both of us that the time had come for us to make this move. Our decision was accentuated by the fact that there was a wonderfully energetic young couple ready to move into our community when housing would be available. Into our very house!

I find life at Friends House all I'd hoped it would be--and more. My experience over the previous 20 years in that rugged rural intentional community was memorable. We had managed all of the business necessary to take care of the tasks of road maintenance, home building, home repair, insurance, garden and orchard production, and caring for one another in sickness and health. The last phrase is appropriate, actually, since our support for one another had some similarity to the commitment and responsibility one takes on in a marriage. When we started we didn't realize this, but except in a couple of rare instances it was a responsibility we all took on happily.

Friends House has many of the same characteristics except that there is a wonderful, caring, compassionate staff to help with some of the nitty-gritty stuff we are not as physically capable of providing for one another as we age. I have found here an energetic contingent to keep us moving as much as we wish. The residents' association gives us a real opportunity for input into the running of Friends House in the parts which relate to our entertainment, comfort and safety. There is as much intellectual stimulation as I, for one, can partake of.

And we're welcome at as many of the festivities of nearby Monan's Rill as we wish to attend. How could life be any better?

Marie Schutz is a native Californian married for almost 50 years to a transplanted Minnesotan. Both Monan's Rill and Friends House have close ties to Quakers, in terms of style and mode of operation. Marie was Recording Clerk at Monan's Rill and volunteer librarian at Friends House.