The Lived Experience of Taking Life Day-By- Day in Later Life

Abstract

The research reported here explores the meaning of taking life day-by- day in later life. This phenomenon is a common experience of human relating which is reported to occur with increasing frequency as one ages. Parse's nursing theory, man-living-health, was the nursing per spective in this research. The researcher proposed that taking life day- by-day is a way of living health. Parse's qualitative research methodology was used to uncover a structural definition of taking life day-by-day. Ten individuals over the age of 75 and living in various settings in Canada participated in the study. Participants were asked to discuss on audi otape the meaning of taking life day-by-day. The common concepts extracted from participant propositions were: affirming self through interrelationships, glimpsing a diminishing now amidst expanding pos sibles, and the unburdened journeying of moving beyond. This article presents the extraction-synthesis process which moved raw data to propositional statements. Heuristic interpretation shows how the com mon concepts were then linked with the major concepts of Parse's theory to reveal the theoretical definition of taking life day-by-day as: valuing the enabling-limiting of transforming. Implications for practice and re search are offered.