To be honest, this piece is only tangentially related to Audiology, but it’s about something near to my heart. Recently, my father’s best friend, Stanley Weintraub, passed away. Stan was a historian and biographer-an expert in George Bernard Shaw. He served our country with honor in Korea, and went on to a distinguished career as a Professor of History & Director of Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies. As I told my parents, I was honored to know him and his memory will always be a blessing. The one great surety in life is that we will all, one day, ‘shuffle off this mortal coil’. All we can hope for is to pass as Stan did, living a full and honorable life, surrounded by loving children and grandchildren.
Though ear & hearing issues affect literally people of all ages, hearing loss is (like many other things) directly correlated to age. Half of those over 75 have hearing loss. Therefore, I have the great honor and pleasure to help lots of people who have significantly more miles behind them than in front. I consider myself blessed to be an Audiologist, because it allows me to speak with folks who’ve lived, and often made, so much history. I had a patient who was friends with John Steinbeck, another who created several Marvel characters, Nobel Laureates, artists & musicians and so much more! Different careers, cultures, passions. Fascinating lives, with so much knowledge and memories of times gone by.
But when the journey ends, that knowledge and those memories are lost. I truly wish I could remember every little bit of what my patients relate to me! So when I have patients come in with their adult children, I encourage the children to sit down with their parent(s) and ask them questions about their lives (childhood, career, travels, etc.).
Get out those family photo albums gathering dust and ask questions about who they see and their family history. With the prevalence of ‘smartphones’, tablets, webcams, etc., we can easily save those precious memories, knowledge and family histories for generations to come. And no less important, it will spur engagement and connection with those we love.
Life is far too short for many things, but it is certainly too short to let ‘life’ get in the way of spending precious time/connecting with loved ones, learning about our own family history and honoring those that came before us.
