Now I Know
I was watching a show I watch weekly, and this one was about an old firefighter who was critically ill and alone, and he wanted to talk about his career to everybody. While watching, it ocurred to me why "old people" do this...it's all we have left. I remember being young and being around people who did this, war stories, etc. As we get older we become unimportant, just another older person to leach off society. It doesn't matter what awards we have...I have a Lifesaver for holding an aorta closed after getting a call to a motorcycle wreck, a diaper pin for holding a newborn in my hands after delivering just before getting to the hospital. I swam a very chemically polluted river after a suicidal young man. I climbed down a steep mountain to save a wreck victim, the mountain so steep my leg went under the open door and skinned my shin up to my knee. I repelled off the bay ceiling, I was the youngest ambulance driver my state every had. I worked 2 and 3 jobs to raise my children, with many kudos along the way. I ran the entire medical records department of my hospital, running charts, coding, transcribing, helping in the ER for 3 solid days alone during a blizzard. I trained people, scheduled, mentored, charted, graphed, you name it, putting in very long hours, all the while worrying about my kids I rarely got to see. I used to be very vital and was a very productive part of society. Now just a broken down 58-year-old with no dreams left, no goals, nothing.
I remember being a teenager and waiting for the next outing with friends to include my boyfriend of 3 years. I remember the laughter, the music, the talk. I remember motorcycle rides up in the mountains, nights spent by the lake. Laughing until we cried and couldn't breathe anymore, all now broken down by life. One in a nursing home, one an alcoholic, a few dead now, nothing but memories. Walking 4 miles to meet up with my best female friend to either walk to her house or mine to spend an evening making fake 8-track tapes (oh how I wish I had one), listening to music, cleaning houses, cutting grass to make a few bucks. We all talked about our dreams for the future, we figured we would never be apart and in some ways we haven't been but it's not the same. My dream was to live on the beach with my husband, have children and live happily ever after.
When you look at older people you don't see a prior life. All you see is somebody pitiful with wrinkles, fat, and other disabilities. I always think now I know why people in nursing homes just sit around and smile, and now I know why. They are remembering back when they had a life. Young people can't imagine we had that one love of our life, the smiles, the music, lying on the bed just talking for hours, and of course loving each other as deeply as you can with only the two of you in the world. How long ago that was.....never forgotten. Now we're old and it's sad to think you'll never sit with your love under a blanket by the river with a roaring fire going, drinking a beer and just being. You'll never walk hand in hand because of course now you can't walk at all and there is no hand. There's no looking forward with any hopes of what can be because it's just not there. Now we just be, and keep our memories of when we were and wait for the day we close our eyes and take our memories with us...and now we know why older people aren't afraid of that. There's just nothing left but the wait.
We become orphans. We lose our entier families. I remember sitting on the porch with relatives playing guitars, banjos, etc. and singing, watching the chickens roam around (and running from them). The family dinners, reunions, cousins, the old TV shows. I remember when I was about 9 five of my cousins came in and went camping with us. My grandfather sent them up the mountain to supposedly collect water, and he circled around and watied and jumped out in the dark and scared the life out of them. It's those sounds you remember. Laughing at mom for being terrified of spiders. Sitting up with mom and my friends playing board games all night. Sitting at the hospital with her on that last night. I still remember screaming and being told by the nurses to go outside so as not to wake up the other patients. I can't even count how many times I had to take what little I owned and try and find a place to sleep, but I made it. Nobody looks at you and sees your past. Doctors just see you as useless and many times don't believe you anyway (been trying to talk about a heart problem over a year now). They are young, excited and just starting their journey and you just aren't part of it.
So we continue to be, we smile at a joke we didn't really hear, pretend we're interested in something we could care less about, pretend to listen to a coversation when in fact we are lost in our own thoughts, gone away to that place where we were happy, when we still had dreams.......
I remember being a teenager and waiting for the next outing with friends to include my boyfriend of 3 years. I remember the laughter, the music, the talk. I remember motorcycle rides up in the mountains, nights spent by the lake. Laughing until we cried and couldn't breathe anymore, all now broken down by life. One in a nursing home, one an alcoholic, a few dead now, nothing but memories. Walking 4 miles to meet up with my best female friend to either walk to her house or mine to spend an evening making fake 8-track tapes (oh how I wish I had one), listening to music, cleaning houses, cutting grass to make a few bucks. We all talked about our dreams for the future, we figured we would never be apart and in some ways we haven't been but it's not the same. My dream was to live on the beach with my husband, have children and live happily ever after.
When you look at older people you don't see a prior life. All you see is somebody pitiful with wrinkles, fat, and other disabilities. I always think now I know why people in nursing homes just sit around and smile, and now I know why. They are remembering back when they had a life. Young people can't imagine we had that one love of our life, the smiles, the music, lying on the bed just talking for hours, and of course loving each other as deeply as you can with only the two of you in the world. How long ago that was.....never forgotten. Now we're old and it's sad to think you'll never sit with your love under a blanket by the river with a roaring fire going, drinking a beer and just being. You'll never walk hand in hand because of course now you can't walk at all and there is no hand. There's no looking forward with any hopes of what can be because it's just not there. Now we just be, and keep our memories of when we were and wait for the day we close our eyes and take our memories with us...and now we know why older people aren't afraid of that. There's just nothing left but the wait.
We become orphans. We lose our entier families. I remember sitting on the porch with relatives playing guitars, banjos, etc. and singing, watching the chickens roam around (and running from them). The family dinners, reunions, cousins, the old TV shows. I remember when I was about 9 five of my cousins came in and went camping with us. My grandfather sent them up the mountain to supposedly collect water, and he circled around and watied and jumped out in the dark and scared the life out of them. It's those sounds you remember. Laughing at mom for being terrified of spiders. Sitting up with mom and my friends playing board games all night. Sitting at the hospital with her on that last night. I still remember screaming and being told by the nurses to go outside so as not to wake up the other patients. I can't even count how many times I had to take what little I owned and try and find a place to sleep, but I made it. Nobody looks at you and sees your past. Doctors just see you as useless and many times don't believe you anyway (been trying to talk about a heart problem over a year now). They are young, excited and just starting their journey and you just aren't part of it.
So we continue to be, we smile at a joke we didn't really hear, pretend we're interested in something we could care less about, pretend to listen to a coversation when in fact we are lost in our own thoughts, gone away to that place where we were happy, when we still had dreams.......
Comments
Post a Comment