they would make a list something like this

Watching the television news with Orelia is a multi-track experience.
At 89, Orelia is doing the work of extreme old age -- the great life review, or cramming for finals, as one of my friends calls it.
We know so little of old age and its processes, especially its growth processes. We think it's all illnesses and a long slow tumble downhill. Actually it is just a path to be followed to what we all presumably hope for,replica relojes a peaceful death.
In my work with Alzheimer's, I have found that people with dementia also do this same life review. They examine and experience emotionally again their great relationships -- with parents, or lack of them; with childhood place and experience -- as well as the great themes of life -- pain, loss, belonging, home, heart and love.
This is certainly is true of Orelia. If I listened to those who knew her before, I might have viewed this time in her life as confused, demeaning and dysfunctional. Instead, I see her heart and concentration fully involved with her inner work. The rest is just stuff.
In her younger life, Orelia was a bit of a heroine. She had a motor-cycle and side-car, got her pilot's license, took her young nieces camping and hiking
Many I know manage to live in old age with limitations that would have seemed unbearable, even to themselves, at an earlier time. Our souls, it seems, expand their tolerance for difficulty when life demands it.
Now it takes Orelia an hour to get up, an hour to make her bed, but she has those hours available, so it doesn't seem a hardship. It's just what life takes now.
If Orelia is haunted by anything, it's her own secret. Instead, she weaves together the lines of time, often quite seamlessly. She ends her day with the ten o'clock news from Tucson. It starts with illegals.
'Oh yes,' she says, 'They come from Europe, you know, and they're always trying to get in down the St Laurence River. Half the families in town employ them. Well, they work hard, you know. ' Of course, she is referring to 1925, Rochester, New York, up near the Canadian border.
The next item is about the police catching drunk drivers over the holiday weekend.
'Ah,' she says wisely, 'It's because of Prohibition. They go out and get drunk in the speakeasies. ' I smile as I think of the speakeasies of Sierra Vista. Then, just as I'm getting used to the time and the setting -- Rochester, 1920s -- on comes Elton John.
'That's Elton John -- my, he got fat!' Orelia says, throwing me completely back into the present.
'Do you know Fatty Arbuckle?' she spins me back.
'No, but I've heard of him,' I offer.
'I haven't seen him lately,' she muses. 'I wonder if he's still making films. I don't think they make comedies any more, do they?'
'Well, er... ' I start.
'They don't make musicals now either. I suppose they stopped writing songs,' she continues, but it seems to be a philosophical observation, not a complaint.
I let it pass, just as I let pass the information that buffalo had come over the hill that morning and that alligators live in the dry creek by her house. I have a vast repertoire of non-committal comments for these items, the politer-sounding British version of 'Yeah, right!'
'Oh really? You don't say? Is that right? My goodness! Well, I never! That's interesting. '
I try to learn my own old age lessons in advance from those I relojeswork with. If I apply Orelia's lessons, they would make a list something like this.
1. Keep smiling,;
2. Don't complain;
3. Sing cheerful song;
4. Stick to your schedule;
5. Keep a pet;
6. Cultivate the power of denial;
7. Do what you like;
8. Ignore what you don't;
9. Keep up with the news;
10. Drink plenty of orange juice.
Then, central to her faith, always eat Oreos in the middle of the night.