On the Old

Every so often I'll be hit with a thought that seems to have sprung from nowhere. My mind works that way a lot. I kinda find it funny, and most of the time I can amuse myself for a while by retracing my thoughts in an attempt find out where the random thought could have stemmed from.

Anyway...

Last week I was taking care of something at home, when all of a sudden I started thinking about elderly people. Severely random. But once I got over my self-chuckle on the weirdness of my brain's workings, my mind kept on whirring and produced some interesting thoughts which I decided I want to air out here.

I was never too fond of visiting nursing homes. Maybe it was the antiseptic-yet-stale hospital smell, or the fact that so many old people didn't understand when I spoke, (my grandparents often wonder out loud how anyone understands me...) or how the patients used to be self-suffieint and independant and now need help even for their most basic needs, or simply the tangible weight of all the emotional memories pervading the halls... I went to visit a couple of times purely as an act of chessed required of me by my high school, or because all my friends were going, but all the time I was there I felt unsettled, unhappy, and...frightened. Not so much scared by the thought of, "This could be me or someone in my family," but more like, "What happened to the people that used to be living in these bodies...?"

Old age happens to everyone. We mature, go through life stages, get old, and eventually die. Just as surely as young adults start dating, get married, have kids, buy homes, go on vacations...they get old...and then pass on. Even us young people will get old. It's so hard to believe it now, but it's true. And scary. We forget that one day we'll be needing help even for those most basic of tasks which we find so easy to do now. I really don't intend this post to be depressing or morbid, but this is real, it's life, and I think it's important to think about it some time, while we can still appreciate the freedom and spirit of our youth...

I'd once heard that one of the worst feelings in the world--yi'ush, despair--is often felt by the elderly who reflect back on their lives and realize that they could have been better, could have done something differently, should have been something else... And I keep thinking, "Oh, Hashem, let me not know of such feelings. Please allow me to live my life so that at my end I don't regret what I did or lament what I could have done..."

And then there's the beauty of old age... Society so exults youth that so often we forget that the elderly are a product of so many years of self-toil and development. They have wisdom, knowledge, experience, and so much to share...if we just slow down enough to listen. I wish I had more time to sit patiently with my grandparents and hear thier slow tales of their lives and their lessons for how to better live my own. An old person is so complexly beautiful if we learn to look past their wizened exterior...

I was really hoping this post would be shorter than I usually write them. It's just that I always have so much to say, and few words never seem to be enough. I can go on for days; succinctness was never my forte... Eventually I'll find something to say that I can write concisely :-)