Introduction
Background
Understanding biographical storytelling as a methodology in the context of ageing
Methods
Interview design
Interview collection
Characteristics | Sample (N = 80) |
---|---|
Age (years) | |
55–60 | 2 |
61–70 | 9 |
71–80 | 35 |
81–90 | 31 |
91 + | 3 |
Gender | |
Female | 55 |
Male | 25 |
Marital status | |
Divorced/separated | 7 |
Married/partnered | 26 |
Unmarried | 4 |
Widowed/widowered | 43 |
Health | |
Has a chronic condition(s) | 28 |
Healthy | 52 |
Household | |
With the spouse/partner | 41 |
Living alone | 37 |
With friends | 2 |
Reflexivity
Data analysis
Results
Biographical construction of emotional barriers
Paula: “[W]hile he was alive and I was his full-time carer, companion, friend, we had a ball even though he was in a wheelchair, but when he was gone I didn’t know where I fitted anymore. I didn’t know who I was anymore because I wasn’t…”
David: “Well, my wife has always had a difficult hip and right from the days of ironing her blessed skirts I’ve been the one who can do things. I just got on with it… But now, it’s her who has to put my shirt on me. And at this present time, with my left arm sitting pretty well useless in my lap, I’m finding it so, so difficult.”
Simon: “You had to keep a stiff upper lip as it was called and I suppose that’s stuck with me. I mean, people in my generations who came through the war, not that we were fighting, I was too young, a child, a boy, you had to get on with all sorts of things… [but] I feel sorry for myself at times when you are sat and you think oh god, I do wish she [my wife] was here and I do miss her.”
Biographical pain
Jane: “So from an early childhood I learnt that I was a bad person. My brother certainly told me that. I was stupid, ugly, etc… I mean, last year my daughter-in-law, the French one, started suddenly explaining to me what a worthless person I was and I burst out in tears and it took me months to think, well, poor you, if you are not able to like me, how horrible must that be for you, how horrible to hate.”
Patricia: “I look back and think I was a loner throughout my life, but that’s the way I wanted to be. And if you didn’t accept me as that, or didn’t include me like that, I’ve learnt in the past, ‘Well, I don’t care anymore,’ but now I do care when children call me ’single’ and ‘old’. But yes, I’ve been rejected by children, which is the worst thing; it’s horrible.”
Diminishing selfhood
Iris: “The only other thing is of course that most of my friends are dead. I’m 90 on Christmas day and when I go through my life, my school friends, most of them are gone, my college friends, most of them are gone. I’m the only in-law left, I’m the only great grandparent left. So that aspect of the extended family becomes less and less… Yes, then it becomes lonely as regard your future and your past life and the people that I was familiar with, people that I worked with, of course, and the people that I had social contact with and relatives. My own family, I’ve only got one brother left and my husband was Dutch, and the Dutch family, one sister-in-law. So I’m finding that I’m standing alone as regards my former life.”
Emma: “Absolutely, and ‘who am I?’ This is why old people talk about their lives, their past, or whatever, because they want you to know who they really are inside of the old visage.”
Robert: “I did sort of think, a couple of years back, ‘Oh, I’m now at the age that Jim died.’ But it’s one of the things that you come to learn, these things happen in life, I’m afraid. There was a young lady, younger than us, again died of cancer. That was one of our bridge group. We sort of knew it was going to happen, but it happened quicker than was expected, and again, that brings home your mortality.”
Sharing life stories as a means of retaining biography
Craig: “We are creating a memory box for each of them [grandsons] where we’ve written a kind of autobiography each of our life, the interesting bits anyway, the bits that we want them to know… We are finding it quite cathartic and quite nice and I would like to think that in 50 years’ time, our grandson will show this information to his grandchildren.”
Helen: “So, my mantra is focus on strengths, which makes your weaknesses irrelevant … ‘we appreciate our strengths rather than constantly looking for problems?’ So that has become part of my thing here as well, when I’m talking to people. It’s very much reminding them of their life experiences and their strength and wisdom and things like that.”
Interviewer: “Yes, it’s just such an extraordinary story.”Helen: “Well, relating it to you makes me appreciate it more, because it’s something I just took for granted and never questioned. But the depth of it suddenly, talking to you, I thought oh wow, I must tell my brother and sister that.”
Jennifer:” This is what I miss a lot, a private space to talk … All my life I’ve suffered … and some things I do find very hard, like this illness now. With everything that’s gone wrong, I would have liked to talk to somebody, no advice, I want to let off steam. But it doesn’t happen…”