View Libby Znaimer
MY NEIGHBOUR Gwen Rapoport, who lives two doors down, hosted the going-away party for Carole, who lives across from us. Carole decided to sell now that her husband is in a care home – he suffers with Alzheimer’s disease. Gwen decided to stay after her husband, Anatole, died 10 years ago. Her home is still a centre for concerts and other social occasions, and it is full of people of all ages. Gwen is 97.
We know that loneliness and isolation are deadly, and social engagement is a key to healthy aging. Gwen is the poster child for this truth. It helps that she lives in a neighbourhood that is truly a community, but she is also one of the people responsible for making and maintaining it.
She is originally from Greenville, Ohio. She met Anatole, a Russian immigrant, in Chicago. He was a concert pianist before becoming a world-famous mathematician. Over the years, my husband, Doug, and I attended concerts in their living room featuring Anatole at the piano. Their sons, Anthony and Sascha, continued the tradition. We often hear wonderful performances by Anthony’s Windermere Quartet before they take to a larger stage. At these gatherings, I began to notice a variety of people helping out, people who were also coming and going at other times. Were they caregivers? Friends? Family?
The party for Carole was a potluck, but the pièce de résistance was a plateful of arepas –a Venezuelan specialty – prepared fresh with great flourish by a young man named Edgardo. I thought he was the caterer. But Edgardo has been living at Gwen’s for two years. He moved in after Venezuela cut off currency exchange and he had to borrow money to complete his studies at George Brown College. He has the diploma and a good job and is paying back the loan. He can stay at Gwen’s in exchange for arepas and other help. Then there’s Cathy, who is in her early 60s. The house she rented for years burned down before she arrived here. Gwen isn’t even sure exactly how that connection was made.
Sascha’s friend Arthur wasn’t at the party. He came and stayed after going through a job loss and a marriage breakdown at the same time. Gwen was pretty vague when I asked if her housemates pay rent. Some pay her some money sometimes. They help with food and tasks around the house. Most of all, they are companions. “It’s not like I have boarders,” she scolded me. “These people are like family. And there’s always something going on here.”
There have always been a lot of elderly people on our street, and I’m convinced our neighbourhood contributes to their longevity. There are committees for everything from maintaining trees to our heritage designation. There are socials. When we arrived 25 years ago, even the Ladies Needlework Guild was still active. At that time, a neighbour we had met once threw a welcome party for us. We plan to do the same for the people who bought Carole’s house.
Gwen has limited mobility, and she can’t see well. But she is otherwise healthy and very sharp. She doesn’t need caregivers – she needs people around her to make sure she is okay – people who will come to her when she can’t come to them. Gwen’s lifestyle is the culmination of lifelong habits. She and Anatole travelled the world while maintaining their home here. “Wherever we have been, we have opened our house to musicians and young people,” she told me. It seems a bit like a commune. But I believe these informal arrangements may provide a mod-
“We know that loneliness and isolation are deadly, and social engagement is a key to healthy aging”
el for many of us hoping to age in place. “There’s one thing I figured out very early on,” she told me. “If you want to be happy, you have to have community.”