While nostalgia is a past-oriented emotion, it has motivational consequences for healthy behaviours, like the anticipation and joy seniors experience when they visit or talk to loved ones.
Jane Somerton, 86, recently received a box of Dutch Stroopwafels, the popular caramel-filled waffle cookies that she calls a delicious delicacy from home, courtesy of her cousins in the Netherlands. The Thunder Bay, Ontario senior has rekindled her relationship with her cousins and oldest friend Lies Burgstra in the Netherlands after a visit this past spring – something she hadn’t thought possible because of her ill health and limited mobility.
Jane has non-Hodgkin follicular lymphoma, a type of cancer that forms in the lymph system and can slowly spread to the bone marrow or spleen. She’s had two surgeries as a result and now also has edema, painful swelling in her legs and feet that makes it difficult to walk.
“I was not really interested in anything anymore because that’s what illness does. But now I am a going concern,” she laughs, adding that she is doing well and in much better spirits this year. “I’m interested in life. My trip to the Netherlands brought me back. And my bond with my cousins is stronger than ever.”
She emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada as a teenager with her family on an immigrant ship after the Second World War. They didn’t speak English, but Jane, a conscientious student, taught herself from the schoolbooks for early grades and went on to work in a bank and then became a primary school teacher. When she retired, she worked for a travel company as a tour guide for group trips in Canada and south of the border.
“The nostalgia trigger is re-experiencing, and that’s what connects so beautifully to the Chartwell Foundation and wish granting,” says Sharon Ranalli, vice president of marketing and communications at Chartwell Retirement Residences. Fulfilling seniors’ dreams directly supports nostalgia. Most of the seniors’ wishes are about re-experiencing something they have done in their lives or being with people who help them revisit those experiences that make up our most cherished memories. “Photos, conversations and the act of doing,” are well-documented to improve health as we age, she says of the research. “People need to feel involved and be purpose-driven no matter what age they are.”
As experts point out, social isolation and loneliness are different: Loneliness is the distressing feeling of being alone or separated, while social isolation is the lack of social contacts and having few people to interact with regularly.
Jane, surrounded by friends at her retirement residence and enjoying the rekindled connection to her family in the Netherlands, is experiencing the benefits, including the recent delivery of yummy Dutch waffle cookies.
“I have energy, I have initiative, and now I have a goal,” says Jane. “I want to stay as happy as I am right now and maybe make a lot of other people as happy, too.”