In the Living Years
There’s a video from 1994 where my hands are smooth, and my fingers are manicured. As I look down at my hands today, I see short nails; the skin is aged, and there is arthritis. In the younger years, you can’t imagine how your aging process will play out, and when it starts to happen, you only realize after the fact that it is really happening. Today we’re more aware of what will happen, and still it happens. We can’t stop the process; we can manage it.
When I was in my practicum during grad school, my first supervisor wanted me to gain experience with the geriatric population. I didn’t understand how I could possibly relate to someone thirty or forty years older than I was. I learned that I wasn’t so different, and that Dan Fogelberg sang about it in “Windows and Walls.” At the end of the video, Dan tacked on a comment that this is a reminder to visit and contact aging family members, because you’ll be there all too soon.
Those I worked with lived full lives. There are many people that would love to be fully engaged in life, and they can’t do so. My heart hurts for them.
One of the gifts of an extended family is that we see the aging. We are witnesses to what our grandparents, aunts, and uncles endure in years that should be filled with joy and love from family and friends.
This is why my parents made sure that we visited my great-aunt and my grandparents often and, as much as possible, my aunts and uncles who lived further from us. I didn’t think about growing older, and now that I’m older I realize what a gift it is to have family that call and check in when I’m thousands of miles away. I have a niece and nephew that take the time to check in by Zoom, and others that use Facebook to find out how I am.
Sometimes, living nearby isn’t the catalyst for the check in. So, I’ll tell you a story about my family, and why checking in meant so much to me.
For the first twelve years of my life, my great-aunt was a part of my life. My parents made sure that we’d get to see her monthly. We’d make the drive into Berkeley and park in a place that scared me: her driveway. She lived on a hill, and the house was old. The driveway sloped downward and led into a garage. Quite frankly, I could never understand why anyone would build a house that way. They did, and that was that. I’d get out of the car and walk up to street level, and then climb the stairs into her house. It was her house that was filled with treasures that made that small walk worth it. Once inside, I forgot about the car, and the parking brake, and the fact that every time we parked there I fantasized about the car careening through the garage door.
We’d sit in her living room, and she’d talk about history, the knowledge she had. Her enthusiasm for sharing it was contagious. Because of her, I fell in love with history and Haley’s Comet. She inspired me to read, and to learn even more. Talking to someone who has lived what you’ve only read about is what brings it to life. She was born in a time before automobiles, space launches, and women getting the vote. She was connected with people I’d only read about in books, and she was able to tell me more about them. She gave me a book written by Helen Keller, who was a childhood role model of mine. In her will, I was given many beautiful blue things, because she knew and understood what the color blue means to me. I still have most of the blue I was given. The memories are kept alive in looking at what she willed to me, and the stories remain in my head, and make the blue things more significant.
In her later years she suffered from dementia and begged my parents not to put her into a care facility. There weren’t the options there are now. We went and visited her there, and were witnesses to the slow decline. She was right: her mind slipped from her, and she didn’t really know us in her last months.
I’m proud to say that, as a family, my parents’ generation, and that generation before them, were loved, cared for, and engaged with. We were taught to make the time. Once they’re gone, they’re not here to ask about the stuff you’d like to, or should have, asked in the living years.
It breaks my heart to know that, out there in the world, there are those who sit with their phones, and nobody calls. Call those you love, because in your busy life, there will come a time when they are no longer around.
