At 94, Iconic Writer, Judith Viorst, Has Thoughts to Share That We Need to Hear

In this candid conversation, renowned author Judith Viorst (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) invites us into the vulnerabilities and unexpected joys of the “final fifth” of life through her latest book, Making the Best of What’s Left: When We’re Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered.

With her trademark wit and empathy, Viorst shares profound insights on loss, loneliness, invisibility, and finding renewed purpose as we grow older. Her journey of transitioning from the beloved home she lived in for over 50 years to a retirement community is an honest exploration of what “home” truly means.

You’ll learn practical strategies for navigating loneliness, cultivating community, and re-igniting curiosity in your 80s, 90s and beyond. Viorst’s poignant reflections on grieving her husband of six decades during the pandemic remind us of the healing power of rituals amidst life’s most challenging transitions.

More than a meditation on aging, this compelling discussion prompts us to ponder: How do we create meaning in our latter years? What legacies truly matter? And in life’s final chapters, might our wisest selves finally emerge? Through Viorst’s generous candor, we’re reminded that growing older is a precious opportunity to live ever more fully.

You can find Judith at: Website | Episode Transcript

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photo credit: Milton Viorst

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Episode Transcript:

Judith Viorst: [00:00:00] I was very unprepared for it. He was supposed to come home from the hospital, and now I was in a very new place. I’m 94 years old.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:13] Judith Viorst is an acclaimed author, poet, humorist renowned for her candid, witty examinations of life’s bittersweet realities. Many know her from her classic children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Yet, as the former chief of child psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and the author of many books, she has built a significant reputation with her adult nonfiction works that tackle aging, loss, and the complexity of relationships. Including her newest book, Making the Best of What’s Left.

Judith Viorst: [00:00:46] It’s something I want to write about, something I needed to write about.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:49] And yet nobody really talks about it.

Judith Viorst: [00:00:52] It was a mark of respect and love for our history.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:57] You write about a certain urgency To, to really savor the moments that you have.

Judith Viorst: [00:01:03] Making the best of what’s left when you’re too old to get the chairs. Re-upholstered.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:08] Oh that’s beautiful.

Judith Viorst: [00:01:09] I could be dead before the fabric arrives.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:13] I want to dive into a whole bunch of what you’ve shared in the new book, but I also want to take a little bit of a step back in time. First, because I’m deeply fascinated by your writers journey as well. I’ve heard you share stories about how, at the age of 7 or 8, share poems with your mom’s magazines, and every poem actually had a dead body in it. So there was this fascination, I guess, with sort of like morbidity from the early age.

Judith Viorst: [00:01:38] Well, I finally figured out why there was I felt there had to be a corpse in every poem I wrote. My mother’s favorite poem when I was growing up was she recited a lot. Was Annabel Lee in a sepulchre down by the sea. A beautiful maiden died too young. So I thought a poem wasn’t a poem. Unless there was somebody dead. It took me a while to figure out there were other options.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:03] Well, I’m glad you eventually did. One of my curiosities also is. So clearly you’ve been a writer, like starting in poetry and then writing stories and writing so much else for your entire life. You, when you became a young adult, worked as a secretary in a fashion magazine. You wrote pieces of them, you wrote a children’s book, and you’re always submitting to try and say, I’m writing, I’m writing, I’m writing. This is a part of me. But in the early days, it was rejected.

Judith Viorst: [00:02:30] Everything, every word.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:32] Publication didn’t come for you for quite a long time. It’s funny, I was recently watching a documentary on this legendary songwriter, Diane Warren, and she started writing songs when she was 12, and she finally scored her first hit with for another artist when she was 29. So she was writing sort of with nothing to show that she had the chops for 19 years before somebody finally took something and made it public and said, okay, so this is something real. I’m curious, in your case, what keeps you writing for so long when the world keeps saying no?

Judith Viorst: [00:03:09] I have a very simple answer to that, which was I didn’t know how to not write. I didn’t know how. If I was thinking something, feeling something, interested in something. I didn’t know what to do with that except write about it. So it was almost not a choice. I did not know how not to write.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:28] Are you somebody who, um, feels like once had a writer say to me, I don’t know what I’m thinking about a thing until I’ve seen what I’ve written about it.

Judith Viorst: [00:03:37] No, no. My husband used to say that sometimes when he wrote political columns. But I sort of knew what I wanted to do. Sometimes it went off in strange or unexpected directions, but it was figuring out once I had an idea. Now, what was I going to do with this idea? How was I coming into it and writing about it, thinking about it, and so that maybe some of the approaches were, you know, wound up in the trash can because they had nothing to do with what I was going to wind up with. But I always I knew what I was going for. You know, when I wrote about a kid’s bad day, I thought, okay, this is going to be a book about a child’s having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. What would that be like? So was the what would that be like that I had to figure out, but not that that’s what I was looking for.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:29] Yeah. So it’s the empathy part that really sort of stepped in. Although from what I understand, the first touches of publication were something that you didn’t really empathize with. You started writing science books as like the first actual published works. Um, which seems like an interesting left turn there.

Judith Viorst: [00:04:47] Well, my theory is that if you analyze my working Story. It would look so cleverly planned all the way that you would be breathless. It was all just things clicking in and connecting with each other. I had a, um, I mean, I started out as a garment district model, learned shorthand and typing, and got into all these jobs where there were writing choices. So, as you noted, I was always writing and always getting rejected. Had a move down to Washington when my husband and I got married and got a job working for someplace called Science Service Magazine and, um, organization that ran science fairs. It did a lot of things, and one of the things it did was publish books on science for teenagers, paperback books. And so I was working there and, uh, one day, the guy who was supposed to write a book on outer space dropped out of the project, and they looked around rather desperately and they said, what about you? And I came home. I came home to my husband, Milton, weeping and wailing because I said, I am finally, finally getting a chance to write something and be published. And they want me to write about space, and I don’t even know where space is. And I’m whining. And Milton was a journalist, and he sort of responded like a journalist. He’d say, said yes, say said, say yes, and we’ll figure out where space is. And that’s what I did. And there was one point where I could have told you with great clarity, the difference between solid propellant and liquid propellant rocket engines, but you don’t want to know. And I couldn’t tell you anymore.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:37] I mean, it’s amazing though, because I love the non-linear nature of this. You know, I think so many people look at this notion of how do I build a career, how do I build a career as a craftsperson, an artisan, as a writer? And they see that there’s this linear path, I’m going to do this and then this and then this. And the reality is, it rarely ever works that way. And we get opportunities presented to us. And if they don’t fall organically into what we think is the next step, so many of us reject it. And yet you said, okay, this is freaking me out a little bit, but let me just say yes to this, right?

Judith Viorst: [00:07:11] And I even got that when I was working as a secretary. And my friend Priscilla said, you shouldn’t be a secretary, you should be an editor. And she shoved me into a phone book to a booth to apply for a job editing children’s books. And I got that job. And when I moved to Washington, I was able to get a job editing science books, which was my job because I was an editor. Then I got a job writing science books because there I was. So, you know, in retrospect, it looks very linear. But you’re absolutely right. There was no planning ahead.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:48] Yeah, I love that. It’s just this openness to serendipity. And let me try it. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen. It sounds like the science books also opened another door for you. You were writing funny poems often in the early days about, um, how you can survive marriage with humor. And those poems you start to be published. I believe it was New York magazine, if I have it right.

Judith Viorst: [00:08:09] Yes, yes. It was New York magazine. But that was also I mean, there was a step in between that same Priscilla who got me to be an editor, um, and then followed my career when I wrote my first science book, said the Herald Tribune. The New York Herald Tribune is looking for a stringer to write about society in Washington, D.C. while you live there, and you’re now a published writer, even though your writing is in space, I’m going to recommend you for the job. And so I got that next job where I was writing for the New York Herald Tribune, which Published the first issue of New York magazine when it was just starting out, so it was like an inexorable connection. Again, nothing that I could possibly have planned.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:00] I love that that, it sounds like, led to you starting to write kids books. And eventually you write this book, Alexander and the terrible, horrible, No good, very bad day that becomes this absolute phenomenon. But I understand. I know one of your one of your sons is actually named Alexander. He wasn’t a huge fan of the title of the book when you first showed it to him.

Judith Viorst: [00:09:20] He did not like the book. I read it to him in manuscript form. I guess he was 4 or 5 at the time. I thought he was going to cheer him up. I thought he would have a good time with it. He got absolutely furious with me, really furious. He said, why are you giving me this bad day? Why don’t you give it to Nick? Why don’t you give it to Tony, his brothers? Why me? Why me? It was so. I assured him that we could change the name. It. It could be Walter and the terrible, horrible or Stanley and the terrible horrible. However, I also pointed out, and this is quite manipulative of me, your name won’t be in great big letters in colour on the front of the book. So he decided I could keep it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:02] Alexander Wright what kid or what adult is going to say no to that, right? My my name in bright lights on the cover of a book. That’s fantastic.

Judith Viorst: [00:10:11] Exactly. It was not very honorable of me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:15] Are you? Do things that we have to do as parents. Um, it sounds like this book. Also, this is a book that hits so big and it changes the trajectory of your career, in part, your life. And this sets in motion a then decades long career writing all sorts of different books. And it basically, as you’re building a life in DC and now building a writer’s life, and you start to step into this trajectory of writing more and more of what you actually want to be writing? It brings us, I think we’ll sort of zoom forward a little bit to your your current book. You know, you’re building this beautiful life. You’ve got kids. You’re writing, you’re doing the thing you want to do. Married to the love of your life for, I think over six decades. 2022 hits. And this is a really hard year for you.

Judith Viorst: [00:11:05] Yes. It was. I mean, I, Milton and I knew each other back when we were 18 and 19 years old, when we were a waiter and a waitress at adjoining hotels at the Jersey shore. We then became buddies and, um, had a lot of dark conversations over black coffee at Rutgers University, where we both went. And when he got a Fulbright, he said at the end of my Fulbright, why don’t you come and meet me in Europe as a buddy, as a buddy, and we’ll travel around together. By the time the end of that year came, I think he had found a very nice British nurse, and I had married my first husband, and we didn’t see each other again for ten years. But I once wrote a poem about the secret of a long marriage, and I think it explains what it is. I said, um, the secret of a long marriage is no mystery. He was my habit and my history. That’s what he was.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:10] I’m curious. What? What brought you back together? What was the catalyst there? After being away for a long time.

Judith Viorst: [00:12:20] Well, we were both. We were 28 and 29 when we met again. And both of us were dying to have children. And honest to God, on our first date, when when we were sort of deciding whether we were going to see each other again, you know, like shortly after hello was do you want to have children? Do you want to have children? So it was very it was very, very clear what we had in mind.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:45] I love that it’s like the question that so many people are hesitant to ask, and you were both just like, all right, this matters. The time is now. Let’s have the conversation upfront and get past it or not, you know? So you end up building a life together. He’s a journalist and you’re in DC together for many years. Covid hits, as we all know, in 2022. And and you lose him to Covid. And you know, it’s you write beautifully and humorously and poignantly in this new book, making the best of what’s left about how this affects you. And I think, well, you know, this is the way that it happened for you and for Milton. So many others are in a later season of life, and loss is a part of that. And yet nobody really talks about it.

Judith Viorst: [00:13:32] Well, I talked I talked about it a lot, and I was very unprepared for it, even though, you know, he was in his 90s by then, and I should have been prepared. Except, um, he was supposed to come home from the hospital and he died in the hospital instead. So I never got to say goodbye to him, which I thought was a very, very hard thing to happen. Jewish people have an unveiling after a year after death. And I had heard a rabbi give a beautiful sermon in which he said that one of the, um, one of the good things you might consider doing at the deathbed of someone you love was to say these four things. Forgive me, I forgive you. I love you. Thank you. And Milton and I had always, you know, we were very scrappy couple. We argued about everything. Nothing big. We agreed on everything big. It was more like whether the refrigerator should be yellow or not that we could have a good fight about. We had a lot of. Forgive me, I forgive you. We were very easy and comfortable with our I love you’s, but I had always thought about but had never done. Saying. A rather important global thank you to him for the life we had had together. And. And at the unveiling a year later, I decided that’s what I would do. And so I thanked him. I thanked him for the guy that he was smart and funny and intelligent. And for being such a fabulous father, helping me raise these wonderful sons. And I thanked him for before there even was a women’s movement, he always just did the housework along with me. There was no conversation. He had come from a poor family where his mother worked and everybody pitched in. So he was pitching in. And I thanked him because he was finally a much sort of bolder and gutsier person than I. I never would have lived the life I had lived, gone to places. I’d gone without Milton, who took the whole family along and gave us a larger, lovelier life. So I kind of caught up with it at the unveiling.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:50] Yeah. I’m curious if you’re open to sharing when you’re standing there publicly thanking him for these things in front of people who all care. A year later. How did that feel?

Judith Viorst: [00:16:02] It felt like something that absolutely needed to be done, and that was the right time and place to do it. It felt good.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:09] I mean, it must. It also, you know, part of the Jewish tradition of mourning is sitting shiva, you know, seven days. But again, for those who are lost during the pandemic, you couldn’t gather as a general rule. And that I know many people who aren’t here and friends who lost family as well. And that was one of the things they struggled with as well.

Judith Viorst: [00:16:28] Yes, absolutely.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:29] And for you to be able to a year later, basically like come back and say like this is the missing piece of what I still need to say. It just must have been really powerful. And it sounds like important to you.

Judith Viorst: [00:16:40] It was very important to me. Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:42] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. When you decide then to write this new book, which is really a reflection, I mean, in part it’s a reflection on this long, beautiful marriage, but it’s also a reflection on the moment of life that you’re in. Why now? Why this book and why now?

Judith Viorst: [00:17:02] Well, because it’s my life now. I moved to a retirement community with Milton. But, you know, he died a year or so after that, maybe a little bit longer. And I, you know, I found myself I’ve been writing about phases of my life and about, you know, how different the 30s are from the 40s and the 50s all the way through, been writing books of poems about the decades of my life. And now I was in a very new place. I’m 94 years old. I’m an old lady, but it’s something I want to write about. Something I needed to write about, how it was for me, how it is for me, how it is for my friends. So I’ve talked to a lot of people. I pounce on people all over the place to ask them about what their lives are like right now. So this is a collection of poems and essays about what I call the final fifth of life, between 80 and 100.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:02] I think it’s so beautiful also because you’re sharing. Okay, so this is my experience of what it’s like to be alive in this season, but also for the generation below who often become very involved on a day to day basis in the care and just emotionally and psychologically everyone’s processing. What does this mean to me? And it feels like part of the work that you’re doing here is sharing a little bit of like, well, this is actually the experience, and maybe your parents or whoever you love isn’t speaking about it, but let me at least give you some insight into what might be going on in their minds and hearts and lives.

Judith Viorst: [00:18:38] Yeah, I think I think there’s a lot more openness now because we’re all living longer, a lot more challenges, certainly. Um, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Our kids are all keeping an eye on us. I complain that my children never come to my apartment without opening the refrigerator and checking the, uh, the expiration dates of everything I own in the refrigerator, claiming that some of them have died a year ago and throwing them all out. And, um, God knows, until I finally stopped driving, have having many strong opinions about my relationship with my car keys.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:19] I’m guessing also that that coming over and checking the refrigerator has been going on for the entire lives, but the intention behind it has maybe changed.

Judith Viorst: [00:19:27] That’s I think you’re I think you’re right about that. But it’s it’s only when when you when you have my my final fifth age group that our kids start overtly acting as if we’re in need of a certain amount of adult supervision.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:44] You brought up the, the, um, the experience of having moved from your home into a facility. And this is one of the things that you write about, you know, and it’s this exploration of what does home actually mean? Take me into this a little bit.

Judith Viorst: [00:19:59] Well, I left a home. I left a house that Melton and I had lived in for over 50 years. And as I write in my book, I never loved any physical object the way I loved this house the first time I saw it. I kept on saying, I can’t live without it, I can’t live without it. And I hadn’t even gone through the front door yet, just looking through the front door. I knew I couldn’t live without it. And Milton kept on shushing me. Said, they’re going to raise it. They’re going to raise the price of the house every time you say you can’t live without it. And, um, once I moved in there, I loved this house every single day. I never got used to it or thought, oh, well, this is my house. And, um, you know, some nights even, you know, right until the end of the time I lived here, we drive up into the driveway and I’d say we get to live here. This is our house. So I really, really loved it. And, um, it was a house that was, um, full of children. It was a place that all of our kids pals came to. A lot of bodies lying on the floor. So the all over the place. Just throw some more pasta. It was called spaghetti back then. In the pot. If more were staying for dinner, it was a very happy place to raise a family. And a very beautiful place to live in. And, um, I thought I would never get over leaving it and moving to an apartment in a retirement community, and I have gotten over it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:21:33] As you’re describing it, um, I distinctly remember actually leaving the childhood house that I grew up in when my folks decided it was time and I was in tears. And this was just like 18 years of my life. When you leave this home, you know, after 50 some odd years and you finally, like, you hand over the key and you drive away knowing that this is no longer yours. What is that moment like for you?

Judith Viorst: [00:21:57] We had a moment, or we had a period before that where I decided to emulate the people next door. The people next door had lived in the house they lived in for three generations, and they brought in a priest, and they had a farewell ceremony. And I decided that’s what I was going to need to do that before we left the house, got the kids and the grandkids together. And we sat around the living room and we told stories about the house, funny stories of outrageous stories. And, um, then we invited the neighbors in for prosecco and little cupcakes, and I made a big deal of it. I made a big deal of honoring the time we had lived there and said a proper goodbye to it. So yes, I had the kinds of tears that you had when you left your house. But I also had a feeling that I had respectfully thanked and said goodbye to my house.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:58] Mhm. And what you’re describing almost sounds like an Irish wake for your house.

Judith Viorst: [00:23:03] Well I think I did have some of that. I think it’s a good thing to do. I would recommend it to other people. You bring back all kinds of memories, some of them really funny. Some of them I never heard before. And, um, it was a mark of respect and love for our history.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:20] Yeah. I wonder sometimes, you know, moments like that, so many of the big moments in our lives. There’s a ritual associated with it. You know, when you’re coming of age, when you get married, when you graduate and when you pass. But moments like that are can be really profound. But we don’t have these rituals. So I love the fact that you basically created your own ritual to really sanctify it.

Judith Viorst: [00:23:41] Well, the grogans next door created it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:43] Right, right, right. You borrowed it.

Judith Viorst: [00:23:44] Giving full credit to the grogans.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:47] But I love that because there’s something in you that recognizes, like, this is a moment that we need to really acknowledge and and savor and celebrate at the same time and invite people into. When you show up in the new place. I’m curious also. So I moved during the pandemic, after 30 years in New York City, we moved out to Boulder, Colorado, where we are right now, and it was saying goodbye to a city that my entire adult life was spent in and dropping into a small town in the mountains. And I was really concerned about what it would be like to find friends, to make community in a place that was, for me, 2000 miles away from where it spent my entire life. I’m curious how it was for you. Sort of stepping into a new space.

Judith Viorst: [00:24:28] I just want to say, before I answer that, that I’ve been to Boulder. One of my grandchildren lived in Boulder and went to graduate school in Boulder.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:38] Fantastic.

Judith Viorst: [00:24:38] And it’s a lovely place.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:40] Oh. It’s gorgeous.

Judith Viorst: [00:24:41] It’s a really I mean, if you’re going to if you’re going to move in 2000 miles away, it’s a.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:45] Pretty.

Judith Viorst: [00:24:46] Sweet place. Yeah. When I moved to my place. And I’m not using its name simply because this book that I’ve written is so much more personal than anything else I’ve ever written before that, I mean, I’ve sort of said this far and no farther. I’m just not mentioning the name, but it was in town. So I who am absolutely pathetic about finding my way anywhere. And I was so happy that I wasn’t going to have to live and learn a whole new part of the world that that I was familiar with the shops and the location. I wasn’t feeling like I was sitting on some ice floe being pushed out to sea. I was in my basically larger community. It’s a pretty place. The people there very, very smart and interesting and friendly and, um, you know, I came in on, on tiptoes, but I knew some people who were there already. I knew more who were coming there. And, um, I got an apartment a fraction of the size of the house I lived in. But it’s in the trees. It’s every single, every single window looks out on the tops of the trees.

Judith Viorst: [00:25:58] And it’s beautiful. The. The apartment towers pale green at the end of the day because of the greenery in springtime. I had a lot going for it. They have a million activities there. Not many of which. Well, practically none of which I’ve participated in because I’ve been busy writing. But for something as shocking as going from what I described a little unfairly from sort of a great big, fabulous house to something the size of a fancy cruise ship. As I said, a little unfair, but I’m going to say it anyway. I was amazed at how I adjusted to it. I mean, it took me. It took me some months. I kept getting lost. And there are several buildings there. I kept getting lost and needing to be rescued and totally confused about where anything was located. But a lot of people helped me and held my hand and, um, I got through it. And after really struggling with what’s home and I want to go home and this isn’t my home, it’s my home.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:03] It’s beautiful. Part of what you write about in this book also, and you’re speaking about it is, is this notion of loss. And I think a lot of times when we think about that, we’re thinking about a person or maybe a pet, like a being in our lives. And that is definitely something that we will all Um, experience, but also the way that, you know, I think we often don’t think about a loss of place and then how we might step into a new place and honour the fact that, okay, so we’ve grieved this other loss, but there’s also we’re not settling like there’s not, um, you know, there’s a sense of new possibility in the new space. And how can I explore that? And I wonder if that came naturally to you, or if that was something that you sort of had to muster yourself up to really step into that mode.

Judith Viorst: [00:27:50] Well, it took me a while. I, you know, in writing this book, I’ve been absolutely floored by what other people, obviously more adaptable than I have, have done. You know, I interviewed a hundred year old man who was, uh, taking drawing lessons. He was talking about buying a new car. He may have been discouraged from that. You know who was just open? He he hee. Loving meeting new friends. He belongs to a men’s group. He’s. He calls it. He doesn’t call it my last stage of life. He calls it my next stage of life. He’s 100.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:29] I love that. It also brings up this notion of perpetual learning. You know, like being open to this. It’s almost like, how do I reconnect with curiosity and not just sort of like, assume that there’s nothing left to learn or why bother?

Judith Viorst: [00:28:44] That’s such an important point. And my God, what goes on at this place? You know, they have a group that speaks French. A group that only does singing fiction group, nonfiction group, political science group. I can barely scratch the surface of all all of the things you could do. Exercises of every variety. And it’s just amazing. You could be busy 24 hours a day satisfying your curiosity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:13] It sounds like it’s all it’s a matter of whether you know you want to take advantage of it. One of the other things that you write about about, let’s call it the final fifth of life using your language. And this is something I hadn’t really thought about, but it really landed with me, is this experience of feeling invisible?

Judith Viorst: [00:29:31] It is one of the realities of being old. There’s a wonderful New Yorker writer named Roger Angell who who became a widower in his 90s, but he wrote about being in a conversation with with people, I guess, somewhat younger than he was. And there was a pause in the conversation. He made a comment, not taking over the conversation, just making it useful. He thought a comment, and when he finished, they went right back to talking, as if as if he hadn’t said a word. And he says in his writing, hello, have I left the room? And then he realized that when he was telling the story to other people, everybody his age was nodding their head like they’re just not as interested in your opinion anymore. And it’s like, um, pops, you had your turn. It’s now our turn. It’s not done meanly. It’s just done. I was in a shop one day where two brothers worked, and I was chatting with both of them very vivaciously when, um, some beautiful blonde came in and all of a sudden not one of them, but both of them had suddenly turned away, as if I had vanished in a puff of smoke. And I had to say to myself, Judy, you had your turn. It’s their turn. It’s our turn. So there are some of that, and and, um, you got to get over yourself about that. You’re in a different stage. You know, there is the realities. Have been there, done that. Not that I’m particularly interested in being completely invisible. This is why I’m wearing my fake rose tattoo on my neck at 94. Shame on me. But I love it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:22] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. What I love about you writing about this also, is that so? I’m somebody who has parents in their 80s, and I’m blessed to have them with me still. And it made me start to question just of myself. I’m like, huh, how am I being on the other side of this? You know, like, is there am I not even realizing and without any malice or intention, like, am I actually sort of, um, making invisible those around me who are in an older season of life? And it really made me sort of think about it more and question. And I hope, be more attuned to it as I step into conversations and relationships with people. And I just I found it really helpful, just from my perspective, to be made more aware of it.

Judith Viorst: [00:32:11] You know, this psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, wrote about there being eight stages of life with different challenges at every stage, autonomy and industry and generativity. There are eight of them. The last stage of life begins in the Ericksonian view at 65, where you start to look back on what you’ve accomplished and try to find satisfaction in what you’ve done. I read that and I was 65, I think. 20 what? 24 years ago or something like that. Anyway, um, I’m really not going to spend my time looking back on my achievements. I’m not, you know, I’m not done yet. I’m not dead yet. And I think this is a time of life when we have to figure out each one for ourselves without an ericksonian goal in mind. What we want to do between now and dead to make meaning in our life. And that’s for each of us to figure out what kind of meaning we want to make of our life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:19] I love that because I, I agree, I think there’s often an assumption that you hit a certain point and you take this model 65, and that’s where you’re kind of supposed to switch gears. Sam, I’m moving into a different mode, and I’m going to be more reflective about what I’ve done, rather than intentional about what I still can do and want to do. And there’s an assumption in there that you won’t be able to really contribute more. And I’ve never understood that. And I’m having this conversation with you, and you have continued to have this stunning writing life and contribution life. And I’ve always wondered, why do we have to switch gears into this thing where it’s supposed to be about reflection and contemplation and not continue contribution?

Judith Viorst: [00:34:08] Well, I think it’s a legitimate choice. I think, you know, and I would never take that off the table. There are people in my age group who are doing more of the same that they’ve done all their lives, or are people trying out new things. I read about a man running his first marathon at 90. His first, not his last at 90. I also know somebody who is was an absolute, absolute superstar in her career, the recipient of vast amount of accolades and admiration and respect, who in her 80s left the career, now sleeps to 11 or reads a papers, reads a book, maybe watches a movie, and every sunny Sunday goes and watches the world go by at a restaurant by the Potomac. And it’s, you know, she says, I’ve done everything in my work that I wanted to do and I don’t need to do it anymore. And she’s living a different kind of smelling the roses life, which I also very much respect and admire.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:17] Yeah. And I didn’t mean to diminish that choice in any way. I just always find it interesting that, you know, there’s this we make blanket assumptions about, sort of like the way that everybody is supposed to shift or the way that everybody is supposed to change, the way they’re thinking and doing at a certain moment in life. And it’s like, and what you’re sharing is, no, actually, I’m an individual, and the person next to me is an individual, and the next and the next, and we all may make very different choices, and that’s okay. In fact, that’s incredible.

Judith Viorst: [00:35:46] I did have one very pushy suggestion. I have a I have a chapter there on how to be happier, how to be happier when you’re when you’re old and you know, one was being able to getting better at laughing and having a sense of humor about things. Not being so quick to have your feelings hurt. A very big one was don’t fall down. Ask for help. Don’t fall down. Be a mentor. But my last one was sort of hit me on the head was save the world, help save the world. And I realized, you know, we look at our kids, we’re all people, and we say, oh, kids, we’re so sorry that we’re leaving you. This rotten world so full of trouble and sorrow as we slink off the stage. And then I said to myself one day, as I was making this speech in my head, you’re not dead yet. You’re still here. There’s still some small something you could do to make things better. And it’s a message that even though I try not to stand on a soapbox, that I. That I would like to pass on to people, we can help save the world. I mean, I it can be a very small thing. During the last election, I gave myself the assignment of writing 1000 postcards. You’re just saying get out the vote and you know you do 20 a day, that’s all. You put on some music. It’s a lovely experience. Makes you feel happier.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:13] Mm I love that. And it brings in also this notion that purpose really matters to us no matter where we are in life. And maybe the thing that gave you purpose for one particular moment or season is different, or maybe it’s not there anymore, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find that sense of purpose in so many other explorations.

Judith Viorst: [00:37:35] Exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:36] I mean, that also brings us to one of the other things that you write about so beautifully, which is this notion of time and the fleeting nature of time. And you write about a certain urgency to really savor the moments that you have.

Judith Viorst: [00:37:50] Yeah. There aren’t a lot of them left. And, uh, don’t waste them. If you can possibly manage to stop checking on your aches and pains and complaints about everything and just shape up and look out your window at spring coming. You can treasure and enjoy what you’ve got left.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:12] Talk to me a little bit about. Also, one of the common experiences that I’ve had shared with me is is loneliness. I feel like loneliness has actually become. And there’s data around this, an epidemic in this country across the board almost at every age. But there’s a different experience and different circumstances that often cultivate the experience of loneliness when folks move into that final fifth of life. Take me into this a bit.

Judith Viorst: [00:38:40] Well, I’m absolutely I mean, the Surgeon general has written about it as an epidemic. And for older people, let’s start with the fact that people we love die. I mean, people that have been part of our lives and that have been central to our lives die. And, um, we also lose people because we’ve moved away. We can’t participate in activities that we used to participate in with them. And we’ve given up our cars and we find it hard to get around and, um, and people who love us and watch over us and help us also have to get out the walker, put it in the trunk of the car, get you to have the seatbelt around. You pick up the shoe that fell off your foot while they were putting the seatbelt around. You read the the menu to you and so forth and so on. You I mean, you’re not going to be abandoned by people who love you, but they may not be so fast to spend time with you again. And there may be three generation of vacations that no longer make any sense because it’s too hard for you to be at the beach. So with nobody being a bad person, nobody doing anything inconsiderate to anyone else.

Judith Viorst: [00:40:06] People may back off, become less involved with you, and you become lonely, uh, because of the realities of your life. What that requires and what we’re encouraged to do by. I think a lot of the people who are thinking about this these days is we have to reach out. We have to make a phone call. We have to make an effort to, um, ask, will you come over or can we do this or that together? Even though we may want to be the most independent people in the world who don’t need anything from anybody. And one of the things, one of the really amazing things about this retirement community I live in is that people do indeed find community people. I mean, we all think we’ve made our best friends. When our kids were young and we all met at nursery school, and they don’t make new best friends in old age. Well, retirement communities like the one I live in are opportunities to make new friends and connect in new ways. Share interests by all these activities they have. Or have a dinner together. And, um, you have to make an effort or you can wind up lonely, but you make that effort if you can.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:29] Mhm. I was thinking as you’re describing that, just how challenging it becomes for adults almost of any age to make new friends.

Judith Viorst: [00:41:40] It’s hard.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:40] For five years we ran an adult summer camp the last four days of every summer where after the kids would leave, you know, it was 160 acre place in upstate New York. And the kids would go home and they would fumigate the whole camp. And and then we would welcome, you know, 4 or 450 adults from around the world, the sleeping kids bunks and do all the kids activities and then do all sorts of other stuff.

Judith Viorst: [00:42:01] Oh that’s great. What was it called?

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:04] It was literally called camp GLP for Good Life Project. and.

Judith Viorst: [00:42:08] Nice.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:09] People would come. You know, I remember talking to somebody and they had come from Australia and I said, oh, you must just be here. Sort of like touring the country and traveling for months, right? And they said, no, I literally got on a plane just for these four days to do this. And I kind of raised an eyebrow and I was like, I’m not sure I’m okay with that, actually, but.

Judith Viorst: [00:42:27] That’s very nice.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:28] The comment that we heard over and over and most folks were in their 40s 50s, I think the age range we counted one year was 18 to 81, and what so many people told us was that once they get into sort of like the middle years of life, it’s so much harder to make those, quote, camp level friends that you made as a kid that when somebody else creates the container to bring people together, it changes everything. And they were able to to make those relationships. They really struggled to make out there in the outside world, and many of those relationships have endured for life. And I wonder if we all need more of those containers, you know, like whether it’s moving into an assisted living facility when you’re older or even the middle years of your life when you’re 40, 50, 60, you know, I feel like we we dissociate from a lot of community and, and from the opportunities to actually make those level of friends because we just stop believing it’s possible.

Judith Viorst: [00:43:23] Yeah. You and you obviously created something where it was very legitimate for people to say, hey, have supper with me, or let’s go do this or let’s go that together instead of you feeling like, oh, poor me, I have to ask for company. You’re encouraged. You’re supported in doing that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:41] Yeah. The first hour that people arrive, we would give them what we called human bingo cards. And your job was by the end of the day. And the cards would be like somebody who has read three books in the last three months, somebody who speaks Italian. And so your job was just to walk up to anyone, strangers, and try and fill in your entire card by dinner time. And yeah, we don’t have mechanisms like that for especially quieter, more sensitive people to just walk up to strangers and feel like, oh, this is actually we’re all doing this together. So I feel a little bit goofy, but at the end of the day, it’s really going to make a difference. And it really did. We need more of that, I think, in life.

Judith Viorst: [00:44:18] I absolutely agree. I think the Surgeon General would be very proud of you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:24] I’m waiting for his call any day now. One of the things that you write about, um, is also this notion of just accumulation of wisdom. And I wonder if sometimes, as part of that experience of invisibility, you see also that people stop acknowledging and actually seeking the wisdom that years and pretty much only years can bring. And whether that’s a frustration at all.

Judith Viorst: [00:44:50] Well. One of the things that I do, and that I recommend in this book is make friends with the younger generation. I mean, we have all this stuff we would like to convey. Interesting, valuable. Hopefully our kids are not dying to hear it. They are not dying to hear it, but other people’s children may be. I have friendships with my friend’s kids and sometimes even with their grandkids. I just told one young lady that she had been my friend’s daughter’s child and now she was officially my girlfriend. And I think you can mentor people. You can share ideas and feelings and, um, hopefully what we could dare to call wisdom with people of the next generation. But I wouldn’t push it on my own kids too much. But other people’s kids really seem to like it and welcome it, and it’s I describe it, you know, sort of an extra helping of old age happiness.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:57] Mhm. I love that it’s sort of being honored for, for your wisdom, for your contribution, which also brings us to something that you speak to a little later in the book as well, which is this notion of an afterlife. And, but you don’t really speak to it around the question of like, is there a heaven? Is there a hell? What happens to us? It’s more about what is the dent in the universe that I’m leaving in my wake.

Judith Viorst: [00:46:17] I had a lot of fun and adventure with this chapter because I would I would sort of pounce on people. I’d be I’d be in line getting a shot for something and my retirement community and the line would be sort of long, and I’d tap the person in front of me and say, hi, I’m Judy, and I’m writing a book, and I’ve got a chapter about the afterlife. And do you believe in the afterlife? And if so, can we talk about it right now.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:46] As one does.

Judith Viorst: [00:46:47] As one as one does? I have to say that in all the times I’ve tapped people on the shoulder and said, I’m writing this book, and can I talk to you about this or that? All the people I talk to, I think one person, one person said they didn’t want to talk about it, about any, didn’t want to talk personally about anything. Everybody was absolutely amazing. A lot of the people I talked to, um, were very firmly resistant, saying, when you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s the end of that conversation. But a lot of people, even if they didn’t believe in the afterlife, had thoughts about what it might be like. The friend who you know wants this or that for his friend, even though he doesn’t really think it’s going to happen for himself. And a lot of people, even though they didn’t talk about any kind of either concrete or abstract afterlife, were willing to talk about how they would like to be remembered, what they took pride in. And one of the things I found very, very interesting, very interesting was that all the women I spoke to, with one exception, all the women I spoke to said, and these are accomplished women with all kinds of, you know, degrees and books and achievements. They all said, my children, every one of them said, my children and not my children, as in my children, the famous this or the honored that. But my children as in their decency, their kindness, their humor, their whatever character qualities not labeled qualities. The men got around to their children. But they were never it was never, ever the first answer.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:28] That is so interesting. Just sort of culturally the way that we we lean that way. Yeah. Um.

Judith Viorst: [00:48:33] Yeah. Do you know what you would have said?

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:35] A children was the first thing that popped to mind as soon as you brought that up. Yeah, we have, we have one daughter and she breathes me and, you know, like, God willing, we’ll breathe for, like, many, many, many decades after. I’m not. And that is. That’s everything for me.

Judith Viorst: [00:48:50] Okay.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:51] Yeah.

Judith Viorst: [00:48:51] Well, you would be. You would be the exception to my. I should, but you’re too young. You don’t fit. You weren’t trained. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:59] We’ll revisit it then as we start to wrap up a little bit. You know, you also you get a little bit prescriptive. And I think what this one of the big just ideas or the feeling, the feeling around this book and also your words is this notion of just stepping into whatever moment you have and fully living it and fully embracing it and not surrendering, which is interesting because on the one hand, it can sound really nice, but it can also sound like preachy.

Judith Viorst: [00:49:29] I know, I know, it’s, uh, I it’s an impulse. I try to resist, but sometimes fail at.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:37] Yeah, but I mean, I took it very much as this is an invitation. Like, what if what if you just approached this hour, this minute, this day, this conversation with a sense of possibility rather than inevitability.

Judith Viorst: [00:49:50] Well, that’s what I would wish for myself and wish for everybody my age to pay attention to what’s here and now. Look out your window. Look at your grandchild. The subtitle of my book is Making the best of what’s left when you’re too old to get the chairs. Re-upholstered. And it was really. It was. It was really a question in my mind. I had these two shabby chairs, and I kept on thinking I could be dead before the fabric arrives. And what do I do? And I had this great experience with my family doctor. I wrote a poem about it in the book, which I dedicated to him, in which I had the experience of going for my checkup and complaining. So hard to be in your 90s. You don’t know when you’re going to be dead, how you’re going to be dead, what’s going to happen to you whether you even re-upholster to the chairs. It’s just driving me crazy. I like to plan ahead and I can’t plan ahead. So he just smiled and he listened to everything. And, um. Then I came into the room for the report and this was okay. And these are the blood tests were everything. And then he looked at me and he said, re-upholster. That was that was his prescription.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:05] Oh that’s beautiful.

Judith Viorst: [00:51:07] So that’s it. So I reduced my preaching to to.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:10] One word.

Judith Viorst: [00:51:11] Re-upholster.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:12] I love that. Um, it feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So I always end these conversations with the same question that is in this container of Good Life Project.. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.

Judith Viorst: [00:51:26] To live a good life, to love and be loved and do something good in the world.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:33] Hmm. Thank you.

Judith Viorst: [00:51:35] Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:37] Hey, if you loved this episode, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Karen Walrond about befriending the experience of growing older. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by, Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. And if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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