Aging

Here is something more personal than my rants against the regime.

9/12/19

For a long time I had no close friends. This was while I was wandering around living in my car, and enjoying a nomadic life.

Then, when I went back to college I was able to make two good friends and kept up communications with them.

After working for 6 years as a librarian and three years as a volunteer, I wound up with one new friend who still writes, and responds to blogs.

Lately I have been losing old classmates which is not too unusual, being that we are all in our 80’s and subject to the normal ailments of life.

Moving to a large apartment complex has not produced any new friends at all, so now I have phone buddies, but no new real connections to the community.

The library produces only superficial social contact, and I don’t even know the last names of the book discussion members.

When a person comes into a settled community , she is always the “new girl” and is not welcomed into the bosom of established cliques.

I was commenting on this situation to my son in our latest weekly phone call. He gets worried about my isolation and urges me to go down to the Senior Center and join in the activities. Bingo and low cost lunches have no appeal to me, and I do not drive so there is the night time riding the bus situation.

Riding with strangers at night is also not an option, as I don’t trust senior drivers. Heck- I don’t trust myself to safely drive at night even if I had a car.

This subject of self isolation led our conversation around to discussing how our situations are different.

My son has work, family and religious duties that keep him very busy and involved with interacting with people, but his social life involves talking on the phone about his business.

His PTA membership involves once a month meetings and keeping the web site up dated.

I used to have more social interactions, but feel that since I have done so much. in the past it is time for me to opt out and vegetate with a good book if I want.

Now it is down to two regular phone calls from son and daughter that provides socialization.

My son reminded me of his lack of social skills when he was young and single.

That led us to talk about the years when I did all I could to help my children when they were in need.

He assures me that I was blameless in the loss of two children and did a great job!

That brought back memories of the time when my oldest daughter had her first chemo treatments. The only thing that comforted her and staved off the nausea was when I rubbed her head and neck to help her sleep.

Later I had to take leave of absence from my first real job in New York to fly back and take her to her second round  of chemo therapy.

After her death in 2003 members of her Dad’s family held a memorial event to which I was not invited, and never mentioned.

That angered my son and turned his opinion against his aunt and uncle for years, as he knew of all the sacrifices that I had made for my oldest child.

He also thanked me again for the money that I gave him while I was working for minimum wages, and for the times when he was in need of a place to live while I was in college.

It seemed like my children launched into life, but circled back to me once or twice before they truly had their own lives.

Two of them had shorter lives than normal, which is why we still talk about them, and I write about them after all these years.