ABSTRACT
Although the authors, the old women, are not anatomists or scientists, they have some ideas of how their brains and their senses work within their bodies, and they watch and listen to their loved ones as they age in brain and sense. The authors seek to retain their memory deficits within the ordinariness of everyday life rather than enter the terrain of a medical diagnosis. Functionally, our eyes develop all kinds of issues as we age, starting with near- and farsightedness. Happiness is sometimes framed, especially by the oldest old, not as pleasure but as absence: of problems with the functioning digestive and urinary systems, of disorders of the senses and the brain, and of pain. Although it is the private body that feels pain, our pain affects the activities of our everyday life, as well as our spouses and partners.
