BEING OLD

 We, the elderly, are all trying; trying to make a home for ourselves where we will feel comfortable and belonging. As I walk down the halls of this large apartment building I am struck that there is a sense of desperation many of us feel.  We are here because we have to be...there is no place else for us. We decorate our apartment door with cute little wreaths or pictures. We try to stuff our belongings into the allotted space while we hang on to things we know we will never use or need again. Clothes we once had occasion to wear hang sadly in our closets and we look at them and think, "Well, maybe soon I will have a place to wear that.", knowing full well we won't. I have cocktail dresses and dancing shoes that remind me of a life I once had.

As the years go by our cash reserves get smaller and our expenses get larger. There is no balance. 

Maybe we were self-sufficient at one time, able to manage our lives with some dignity. As the years roll by that changes, usually drastically. Our health dwindles almost as rapidly as our bank account. Help is often offered by loved ones but the thought of changing a lifetime of habits in order to make that accommodation is challenging, if not frightening. 

Accompanied with these emotions is the realization that as an older person, much in life has changed so radically that one is hardly able to keep pace. The simple act of buying groceries is a challenge. Most items are so tightly packed and bound in plastic wrap that you never know how the entire thing looks. There are many surprises when you finally manage to unwrap a tightly bound food item and find what is lurking underneath. Of course, there are high end markets where only the wealthy eat healthy but for the average person, those items are often out of the budget. 

One of the biggest changes has occurred in the use of the telephone. I have written about this before but feel it is pertinent to this epistle. We picked up the phone, an operator answered with "number please",  she would ring that number for you and all was done. I wanted to speak to my father one time so I told the operator 737 and she said, "Honey, your daddy isn't at the store, he's at the American Cafe. Do you want me to ring him there? Scoff if you must, but it was a great feeling to have little things like that to depend on. One of my biggest complaints now is the long dissertation one gets when calling an office, say like the doctor's. All this "If you need accounting, press 2, office staff, press 3, " and so on ad nauseum. By the time the recording finishes I have forgotten why I called as well as what number to press.

There are other problems I could address here but I'm getting tired of thinking about all this. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful that I have a decent place to live and I'm not out on the street. I know there are much worse places to be. It's not bad here, just different from where I thought I would be at this time of my long life.