Reflections on the Design of Retirement "Towers"

Our Victorian ancestors were squeamish about sexuality, while we are frank. But as concerns dying and death, they were frank and we are squeamish: compared with the late 19th Century, we rarely die at home, our deceased are rarely lain out in the front parlor for the valediction of family and friends, and our gravesites rarely show vivid expressions of love and loss. Reader, please allow me a Whitmanesque yawp against the culture of my era, at least in the small issue of the layout of urban highrise homes for the very old:

The "Towers" is a retirement community near where I live. O, it's a fine place indeed!- elegant décor, attentive and competent staff, superb meals, a multitude of diverting activities for the residents. In addition to all this, the Towers provides full medical coverage, including a skilled nursing facility for those whose health is in severe decline. My only complaint is that this nursing facility is in the bottom floor of the 12-story Towers. No! It should be on the top floor.

If we are to regain the Victorians' admirable frankness about dying and death, the metaphor for that (inevitable) process should be up- up toward the world beyond, toward the Universe above the skies, toward Heaven.

I would have designed the Towers with the top floor comprised entirely of the "Nursing Penthouse". This would be a skilled nursing facility as in the existing Towers, with the simple change that it now would enjoy the finest views and light of all the floors- and at night, the lights of the great City glowing all about.

Atop this top floor would be the spacious, beautifully landscaped Roof Garden, to serve Towers residents for postprandial strolls, cocktail parties, and octogenarian trysts. In the middle of the garden would be the Celestial Hospice: a pyramid, 30 feet square and 30 feet tall, clad mostly in glass. It would serve as hospice for up to four dying residents at a time. Hospice residents would enjoy a prospect of all light and air and pleasure: 14-foot ceilings, cheerful staff padding about in their flowing white robes, soft music (especially Bach) in the background, flowers and other sweet fragrances all about. And outside, elegant people strolling about in the Roof Garden, their gossip and laughter mingling with the sounds of the fountains and the birds.

Finally, in the pyramidal space above the Hospice- where it narrows to a 15' x 15' floor space— would be the Crematorium. Towers residents who opt for cremation would be taken up there. Preferably, cremation would occur around sunrise, when San Francisco winds are typically light; this would enable the smoke (as white as possible) to rise straight heavenward through the 1' x 1' opening at the very pinnacle of the pyramid. After cremation, the ashes would be worked into the soils of the Roof Garden, preferably to nourish the herbs, vegetables, or winegrapes that would become part of festive meals at the Towers.

The over-85s will be by far the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population in this century. My hope is that we will get in the habit of treating these oldsters with much more respect - nay, veneration- before their final incineration. I intend to expand on this essay's theme of up in a much longer piece, tentatively titled "Confucianism Reconsidered."