Now that we’re well into November it’s time to begin thinking about the kind of holiday celebrations we hope to experience this year. For many, their holiday get-togethers will be filled with joy. But for others, these annual family gatherings are not a source of joy but of pain instead.

Why?

It’s because too many families contain within them one or more members who can best be described as . . . a toxic relatives.

A few years ago I ran across a newspaper article entitled “Something Crabby This Way Comes.” Here’s how this article began:

          Just one can ruin a whole family’s holiday.

          Those whiny, crabby, you-can’t-please-’em relatives who make you dread getting together.

          Most of these crabs are old. Most of them are women. And most of them can stink up a whole room with their negative vapors.

          So concludes Gloria Davenport, 71, an educator who has spent more than a decade researching the people she classifies as “toxic elders.”

           “The majority of people age gracefully, but there are some elderly adults that are just plain, well, awful,” Davenport says. “They make constant snide remarks about little things. They always start out by saying what’s wrong. They can contaminate a whole gathering, an entire room.”

          They are at their worst during the holidays, she says. “I remember my own daughter saying she wouldn’t come home from college for Christmas if Nana (Davenport’s mother — a ‘toxic’) was there.”

          Davenport coined the phrase “toxic elders” while she was writing her doctoral thesis on “the determining factors of successful aging.” Many people she interviewed, she says, had this personality disorder. “They were so negative, they sucked the energy right out of me.”

Do know anyone like this? Does your family contain a “toxic elder?” Could it be that someone reading this blog posting is a toxic elder in the making?

Frankly, this is an issue that concerns me. One of my ongoing prayer requests is that God will help me grow old gracefully. I don’t want my kids to mature into adults who hate being around me. I want my grandkids, should I live long enough to see them, to look forward to spending time with me rather than to dread it.

I’ll say it again: I want to grow older gracefully!

How about you?

Having thought about this matter some, I’ve come to the conclusion that the single most important thing we can do in order avoid becoming a toxic elder (besides doing our best to remain physically, socially and intellectually active; getting control of our tongues; and making it our goal to imitate Christ better and better until the day we die) is this:

We need to make up our minds to start enjoying life now instead of waiting to be happy someday.

According to experts on aging, like Davenport, one of the things that cause some people to become toxic as they age is the fact that they view themselves as victims who never had a life to speak of. Down deep inside they are angry and resentful that life didn’t turn out the way they thought it would or should. The only way they know to express this innate frustration is to become crabby, demanding, demeaning old people.     

Assuming this explanation for crabbiness has merit, the cure the dynamic is obvious: we need to do our best to get a life before it’s too late! We need to do our best to live each day of our lives to the full so that when we get older we have little room for regrets.

Where do we start?

A poem attributed to Nadine Stair can be viewed as a response to this very important question.  Listen to what it says:

          I’d dare to make more mistakes next time; I’d relax; I would limber up; I would be sillier than I have been this trip; I would take fewer things seriously; I would take more chances; I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers; I would eat more ice cream and less beans; I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.

          You see, I’m one of those people who lives sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to do nothing else, just moments, one after the other, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, hot water bottle, raincoat, and parachute. If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.

          If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dinners; I would ride more merry-go-rounds; I would pick more daisies.

What I hear this wise lady saying is that if she had it to do over again, she wouldn’t sweat the small stuff so much and would take care to press more joy into each day of her existence. In other words, we need to get a life—start really living now instead of always getting ready to live.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still learning how to do this. From time to time I have to remind myself that each day I’m alive is precious—once this day is gone there’s no way to call it back and live it over again.

Do you need to do this with me? Should we, together, make up our minds to do our best to start living our lives to the full right now, so that we have no regrets later on?

What a great story! I’d like to think that my two kids would respond similarly. I want my kids to consider their dear old mom and dad precious and still valuable to them when we’ve become old and gray (okay, in my case grayer)! We carried our kids around throughout their formative years. Someday they may need to carry us around. The point is that if my kids do have to carry me around someday, I want them to be able to do it with joy rather than with dread and disdain. I want to grow older gracefully.

How about you?

Remember, the holidays are approaching!

Something to think about.