"Was a good life, now it is all but over", a senior resident of Georgia Belle Independant Living facilities, Tallahassee, Florida, setting outside to look at the
setting sun.
She told me, when I walked up to her, that she stepped out to see what was going on outside of the building. She actually *was* out there to look at the sunset!
I did not ask her what she was thinking about.
Here at georgia belle Independant living facilities, there are about 160 residents. Often the ambulance comes at night, and everyone sort of just knows that one day soon it will come for them!
Some just sit an Wait for the undertakerbus to pick them up, eventually, but others have the philosophy of
…."Life is Good till the very last Drop"!
An Apt metaphor for someone who is nearly 80, to watch the sun set to the West, "was a good life, still *is* a good life, and even the setting sun is setting in a nice way, after all some sundowns go down hard with 38 degrees and drizzle and 20 mph winds! Today the temperature might be over 80 degrees, in this sub-tropical locale, around the 12th of November, a perfect sunset.
I know a lady here who is a 80+ year old grandmother, and a couple of years ago, one of her grandkids gave to her a Super Nintendo System [SNES] console. I had heard about her, I finally last month met her. Yes she plays only RPGs, rpgs like legend of Mana, the final fantasy series, etc.etc; some of the best role playing games ever made.
[she was a computer programmer in her youth!]
——-
–Another morning, months later, I made a small Discovery in the trash bin, a discovery that goes with this photo.
Well, I had a small discovery yesterday
at my senior residence!
I left in the 8 AM morning by the back door near the trash container, as I had trash to throw out and when i looked in the trash bin door, I saw a box someone had pitched out just earlier. The box was full of empty meds bottles and mostly bottles pertaining to laxatives. Behind this box was a emema-giving device, tossed by the same person. I gave a "detective" glance at all of this to try to feel what the sufferings were of this person: i suspected having a bowel movement took this person hours each and every day, had to, or else "fecal empactation" might occur, a terrible problem in some elderly people!
Later that afternoon, at the Store on the second floor, i saw a small "yard sale" sign on a door across from the store. I knocked on the door and several relatives came to the door and they let me in. The apartment was nearly empty, i was told that the lady who lived here, in terrible health, was now being moved to the Nursing Home, where she could get better care.
I then noted a box of kitchen cooking tools, all rusted and dirty, she probably lived here for years, and cooked a lot, but as her health went down, she cooked less and less, and could not even clean up. Next to this box was yet another box of laxative stuff: now I knew she was the lady who had her relatives pitch out the trash, earlier! As I left, i heard one of the relatives talk about being sure to get all of her geneology books together.
Thus then "it hit me"! here was a lady who moved into Georgia Belle, a lady who had many many interests and talants. She probably did geneology searches on her whole family. A person
of Intelligence and Feelings!
But now years later she is a medical case, her body
might be almost useless, one of these people who if you asked how she was, "this morning", it would take her an hour to reply as she has *SO* many body-ill conditions to report!
My father was like that, the year I lived with my aunt, his sister, he had about 10 strokes and five heart attacks, and in the Home, he was dementia-tated to about a 8 year old child! If one were to meet him there in the Home, for the first time, one might never know he was a blacksmith and a man who once talked four hours non stop and the 10 people who listened did not say one word and when he had to go, one man turned to speak out, and spoke for all of them, "its too bad Dudley had to go, I wanted more"! A STORYTELLER. indian legends, mines, coal, geology, politics, etc.
But you would not know, there, at the Home, then, about Dudley’s amazing life!
MORAL of this post?: One can never judge a summer by the weakly warm last day of October! One cannot judge a river by its low water level in the drought year!
Take this lady who is watching her sunset go down. She might have also had, in her own way, an amazingly creative life, but now her sun sets. The late october sun cannot anymore warm the tomato plants in the New England garden, tis all you can do to keep the nightly frosts from killing the plants outright as you cover then each and every night, the tomatoes are now in "maintanence mode-only", and that "maintanence" takes up the whole day, fills it. You might not know that this tomato plant bore a tomato that won the state fair first prize, in August, several months before!! Next week, probably, the artic blast will cover this plant in 6 inches of snow at 15 degrees, to grave and worms and bone-dust we each all Go some day!
the River of one’s life is measured by
the High flood levels, *not* the drought levels in the dry years!
that tomato plant will be Measured by that prize-winning Tomato!
*not* by how many hours it takes to have a bowel movement, with emema-bag and ten laxative pills at the ready, when she is 87 years old!
—it takes Work, though, to live Good till the very last drop! Mostly it is "attitude", having an ideal that life is Interesting. Thus you then can "rewrite your past" by forgiving the hurts and the negativities that are behind you, then get to know that the Tombstone is but a door, then live like you are *already* on the other side of it, here on earth!
Yes life, whether at age 20: "there is Life beyond your cell phone peer group" to, at age 82, "there is more to life than an enema bag"; takes a bit of action on your part.
One has to become a part of the "life support team", the people around you that make it possible for you to live.
–whether the teachers, bus drivers, car repair people, tech support, if you are 20,
–or the doctors, janitors, clergy, if you are 80!
freestone
Posted by freestone on 2006-02-17 19:03:08
Tagged: , florida , sunset , sundown , old age , seniors , retirement , retirees , retired , retire , people , oldpeople , old , evening , elderly , dying , elder , die , death , city , aging , aged , age , tallahassee , weather , story
