Aging Gracefully or Not

Aging gracefully. What does it mean?

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever had a graceful moment in my life.

There is one woman at the rehab center (I got lectured for calling it a nursing home) who might qualify. She rides her wheelchair quietly down the hall with a smile like she knows a secret we don’t, or maybe she just crop dusted someone. I don’t know the reason but she looks serene.

On the other end of the scale is Delbert. He angrily hollers everything with a voice that sounds like 50 years of smoking. Imagine Gilbert Godfried with an amplifier. It’s constant requests to be in bed,out of bed, out of the room, in the room, and you get the picture. He constantly hollers in his room and hall just to make the staff miserable. Definitely an unhappy soul.

Another man constantly talks about drinking and partying days and drinking beer for lunch at work with his boss. The boss was a friend of mine’s Dad. The sad thing is that his memories and stories never include family. As one who probably talks about family too much, I find this sad.

There is one woman who obviously is struggling with some form of dementia. One time she might be ranting and screaming and then calm. She writes things on a paper pad which seems to calm her.

Writing as a soothing distraction hmmm.

Today I heard piano music coming from the recreation and dining room. I ventured in there and it was her. She randomly went from one old tune to another without finishing all of the tunes. She stumbled at it here and there but you could tell she was once quite good. I’m not a huge piano fan but I sat and listened until she finished. I told her thank you and that I enjoyed it. I wasn’t sure what response I would get but she smiled and thanked me back. She now smiles when she sees me. Hopefully I added some joy to her life. That sometimes tortured woman showed grace when she was playing piano.

Another man who I will call an old fart like me has an ornery sense of humor as well. He will kid and joke with you and tends to go outside in the early morning like I do. I talked about the Yakama woman who smokes next to the building and blows smoke at people. The man was sitting on one of the pathways behind the building. There are at least three ways around where he was sitting. The Yakama woman, still blowing smoke, told him to move when she had several easy bypasses. He calmy looked at her and said “Sorry, this is my reservation.” I almost fell out of my chair and the woman dropped her cigarette.

That’s my kind of grace. In the end I can only hope people didn’t think I was a complete butthole and if they did I probably didn’t like them anyway. All I can come close to in grace are the facts that I love my family, was loyal to friends, and worked hard a day or two in my life. I really enjoyed coaching kids and later teaching young adults about machining and cnc programming.

Hope my writing isn’t too bad and your remembrances of me are mainly good.

Bye for now.