I found Gene’s The Actors Studio interview.
It included legendary director Arthur Penn. He directed Gene in Bonnie & Clyde.
Sonny Grasso (the NY Cop) explains that he and Eddie Egan took Gene and Roy Scheider on ride-alongs in NY. Raiding crack houses and seedy bars. Helping Gene and Roy get get into charactes. as Popeye Doyle and Cloudy Russo.
At the end Gene’s wife Betsy is introduced. Diving is discussed. Gene amd Betsy were certified divers.
The The Royal Tenenbaums is mentioned. That places the interview around 2001 or 2002.
There’s no indication that Gene was planning to retire.
Mrs. Cad and I have been discussing this. We have now made a plan that should one of us become infirm, even if the other can take care of the sick one, we will hire someone to come in for an hour or two 3 times a week with notice to call the kids if the healthy one is incapacitated.
After we couldn’t convince my getting-more-physically-frail-but-still-mentally-capable 90 year old father that he shouldn’t live alone any more, we bought him a medic-alert device as well. When he fell a few months later, the pendant was found sitting on his dresser. The backup plan of “someone talks to Dad every day” did come into play, and he was found the next day, but 24 hours on the floor with a broken leg was sufficiently traumatic that he died within the week. So sometimes you have multiple plans in place, and your loved one still dies in a way you wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I’m very sorry about your dad – that’s really awful. But I begin to doubt that this too-common situation represents fully mentally capable. Not that you or anyone’s caregiver has a lot of choices when people get like this. Our whole legal system and (largely) our cultural mores support people’s absolute right to make terrible decisions for themselves even as their minds start to get a bit creaky, provided they meet some rock-bottom mental awareness standard when the social worker asks them if they know who the president is or whatever.
I am not saying lock 'em up and throw away the key, either, the minute they can’t find a word on the tip of their tongue. So long as their minds are halfway OK, people DO of course have the right to make their own decisions. But as they get up there in years, there’s no doubt that many of them make increasingly bad ones.
His ability to objectively evaluate his own physical condition, sure, that wasn’t where it should have been. But that’s probably true for 80% of humanity, so when do we start deciding that all of them need to have their rights taken away?
For everything else - He knew, far, far more than who the president was. He was still reading Time magazine and a daily newspaper, we’d have discussions about the current political situation (he loathed Trump BTW) where he clearly was up to date and making intelligent observations. Quite frankly he was more mentally capable than most of the people you meet.
No doubt he was more capable than most of any age. I don’t disagree with a thing you said but it’s so frustrating to watch people we care for make this kind of decision, tossing a Life Alert button in a drawer at just the time/conditions it’s most needed, and for all their fierce intelligence, some people (of all ages) rationally choose to allow some very easily avoidable risks of horrible things happening.
There does seem to be a particular mindset that The Old are very prone to, one of very defiant (and seemingly irrational) stubbornness. Maybe that too is completely natural, as whippersnappers become more and more bold telling them what they should do.
Like perhaps most people in this thread I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what my life may be like at the very end. I certainly see my elders making choices I wouldn’t make – choices I’d call willful, and very much Wrong ones – but who’s to say I won’t be making worse ones, when the time comes, and of course I’d want that to be my right, so here we are. Hackman and his wife had a terrible, terrible end due mostly to bad luck; I’m not willing to assign any blame at all. All we can do is try to learn from others’ mistakes.
Again, sorry for your loss and for your dad’s suffering.
The generation above me is making truly terrible decisions, but they have the absolute right to do so. I am certain that other people will judge me harshly for not doing more for my elders, but they don’t want help. They need it and can afford it and should have it, and I’m happy to facilitate it, but I can’t ethically force it on them. One day, it will shorten their lives or kill them outright. Other than expressing concerns and keeping an eye out for signs that they’re not compos mentis, I don’t know what I can do. It’s possible to likely that Hackman’s children were in the same situation, though of course we can’t know.
Is it possible, and ethical, to reframe it into something that does not appear to be offering them help?
Like, “I know you live near people who are vulnerable and could use your help, so use this medical alert so you can quickly summon EMS to come save their lives?” Not a great example, but makes them feel in control because they don’t need help (but also puts a medical alert around their neck). Something like that.
Late: or “I know you don’t need help, but could you be an example” type of thing for others that do need help but are scared to do it/ask for it/whatever…acknowledging they don’t need help; never saying you agree with it; and putting them in a position to get help.
Double late: or asking them if it would be ridiculous to x, y, z. It’s hard to agree something is ridiculous, and then you’ve reframed it in a way they engage with.
Some of my favorite people had dementia. I know what it looks like.
I see two sisters who come to dialysis on my same schedule. They both have a level of dementia. One seems happier than her sister.
Yeah, “decent” is a bit ambiguous.
But I’m totally against saying there are people who “need” to die because of age and infirmity. Firmly against that kinda thinking.
Yes, this is the tack we’re taking. There’s different elders with different issues, but they all come down to the same “I can do it on my own!” attitude that I also see in students struggling with mental illness.
Three elders, living alone, thousands of miles from each other, still driving… I can only imagine that such people exist in the millions. In my case, some progress has been made on two of the three fronts, and we haven’t crossed the line into actively unsafe, just riskier than I think their own assessments recognize.
Which is interesting, given that he then stepped away from acting not too long thereafter – his final film role was Welcome to Mooseport in 2004. He had a few TV “roles” after that, but the were either as a narrator, or appearing as himself, and even then, his last work was in 2017.
Especially in this case, where the wife wants to care for him in their home as long as she can. By all accounts, she was deeply devoted to him.
A friend of mine saw them years ago when they were in town for something movie-related. They were taking a ride on one of the Washington State Ferries. She said they acted totally in love. People mostly left them alone, although when a few greeted him, he was very gracious.
If you’ve ever tried to get an otherwise independent elder to accept help toward the tail end of their life, you might know that it’s a very uphill battle.
Ironically, this was one of the main plot points of one of Gene’s movies…I Never Sang For My Father.
There’s so much in this case that I don’t understand. I realize my own experiences and philosophy color my perspective. Hantavirus was a concern when I lived in Wyoming, where both deer mice and the virus are present. We lived next to a barley field, and deer mice were frequent visitors. They’re whimsical little creatures with oversized ears. I grew to loathe them. Nothing I did–and I tried everything–kept them out of the cupboards, and I’d have to remove and sterilize dishes and the cupboards often. I could never totally relax, as symptoms can appear weeks after exposure. The Hackman’s house was not invaded. I think, “Poor Betty. She couldn’t have suspected.”
Then there’s the dementia. Mr. Hackman’s dementia was advanced, according to the coroner’s report. No matter how devoted you are, and by all accounts, Ms. Arakawa was very devoted, caring for a dementia patient 24/7 is exhausting. Caught between guilt and compassion, my sister overextended herself to a dangerous extent when her husband had it. I wondered how Arakawa handled it without anyone providing respite care. (They apparently had no caretakers.) However, Ms. Arakawa felt comfortable leaving him for a few hours while she ran errands on 2/11. I don’t get it, but then, it’s not mine to get.
I won’t criticize either of them for what they did or didn’t do. Only they knew their needs and capabilities. Only they could define what a “decent” quality of life was for them. If Hackman couldn’t recall his wife’s name, maybe he still got quiet enjoyment out of sitting in the clear desert light.
I have a will, a living will, and have given my kids POA. I’ve arranged for my body to be donated to science. But I live alone. It might take 3-4 days for my family to worry about me. My 89-year-old mother had a medical alert device I guilted her into getting. They do NOT detect falls. She lay on the floor 4 hours because she hated to bother anyone. I’m an active 68-year-old. Should I get one? Not yet, I decide. We consider probabilities. We take measured risks.
They’re gone now, Gene and Betty. I realized today that I’ve spent far longer imagining their final days than they spent living them. Enough. Requiescat.
I live in fear of pests eating my house down. Its log house.
I don’t guess rats would eat it for nutrition. But I’ve seen evidence of the size holes they can chew out of wood in my woodpile.
Add termites, woodpeckers, wood borers. I just know logs are gonna tumble down on my head one day.
I don’t believe we have Hanta here in Arkansas, tho’.
I believe mice, and rodents carry other diseases, maybe not so deadly. There is that bubonic plague thing.
Really we’re but one bad decision, one bad mistake, one error in judgment and we’re not alive anymore.
In the heart of No-Man’s-Land, somewhere along highway 412 in the Oklahoma panhandle, we saw an abandoned house that had “Hantavirus” spray-painted on it in red. That is a ways from Arkansas, but. (Probably some 400 miles from where you live.)
