As the hippocampus is involved in diseases involving memory deficits, a small, almond shaped part of the brain called the amygdala is involved in post-traumatic stress. The reaction of the brain and neural circuitry to prolonged or severe stress is not mere melancholia. In Rob Reiner's wonderful film Princess Bride, The Man in Black tells Princess Buttercup "Life is pain highness, and anyone who tells you different is selling something."

That's a sell I could never make having made my introduction to life's pain early. I was just this side of eighteen when I was first ambushed by life. During those early years I experienced not only intense psychological battering but life-threatening physical trauma as well. By the time I was crawling and scratching my way to twenty I was a much different person than everyone remembered two years earlier. I spent the next two decades battling overwhelming phobias and hijacking my neural circuitry.

But looking back on it all, I'm convinced that many of the elderly today suffer from post trauma effects as well. So, let's get real here and say that life is a battle, a very long life battle. The elderly do more than know it; they embody it in every tired cell of their bodies. And yet so many of us "younger folks" (defined for purposes of this discussion as anyone under 70 years of age) don't want to hear the truth as those more senior to them have experienced life.

Oh, yes, the book about "The Greatest Generation," has already been written, yet the very people who populated that generation lies languishing in every nursing home in America with no one to listen to their stories or soothe their continuing pain.

"Any day above ground is a good day," some of them say, but thousands if not millions of the aged would beg to differ. For them life is unbearably difficult. One such patient of a home for the aged that I visit regularly starts or ends most every conversation with, "Am I going to make it?" And that's on a good day. On the bad ones she'll ask, "What is the point of going on?"

Does that sound like simple depression to you? In talking to these people, (I will be counted among them one day!) and recording their responses to my poignant questions, I was not surprised to find that there aren't any statistics on how seniors are weathering the last years of their lives. On file are only the age groups sampled between 18 and 54. As usual, the elder population gets ignored, which makes the situation all the more dangerous. It is noteworthy that the suicide rate for persons over age 85 is twice the national average. (Could that be because of Doctor Khavorkian's intervention?)

As history has shown us, we only barely allow our artists and other productive members of society to be melancholic. As a society, we simply do not tolerate it in the elderly, let alone understand something even more complex. We want our elders to be "happy," and "positive," and daily heap coals on their heads about their cups being "half full!"

Living life itself is plenty hard enough! I hear the silent cries of the elderly, "Oh, for someone to just shut up and understand! Try to understand what it is like to survive decades of generic life-traumas and multiple losses," they weep!

By the time one reaches 70 and 80 years old, they've got very tattered hearts and souls along with deteriorating bodies. The last thing they need is some cavalier young thing still wet behind the ears patronizing them, telling them that it's all in their heads, that their sense of being overwhelmed is due to maladaptation, that their fears are infantile and that their depression merely self-pity. While advancements in medication have helped alleviate the morose side of aging making the difference between their being curled up in a fetal position and being out gardening and enjoying drives with her grandchildren, I've found that plain old understanding and recognition tossed into the mixed goes a long, long way.

So, here it is, 50 years post my own version of traumatic stress, that I have elected to memorialize and celebrate the elderly, those who've brought us into the world and fought not only their battles bravely but many of our own as well. I feel that we, their juniors, are standing on holy ground. Some are well adjusted and have a positive slant on life even after their traumas and others have succumbed to being afraid of everything, boxing their own shadows and daily fighting off the Mongol hordes of despair.

I understand the pedigree of their fears. Regardless of their imperfections and what the young and more resourced may consider maladaptive behaviors, they are nonetheless war heroes in their own right, deserving of all our respect and our best efforts to bring solace and comfort in their waning and most difficult years.

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