Honoring Our Elders, Our Bodies, and the History We Inherit

Do you think about how you want to grow old?

Are you heartbroken by the way the USA treats elderly people?

I got to see three of my great-grandparents live into their mid to late 90s, and it wasn’t pretty. Decades of hard work left them immobile, weak, and sitting or lying down for years waiting to die.

My great-grandpa was a mean old man. When I was little, I remember him up at his favorite place in Utah, staring out of the window watching chipmunks and enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Then the altitude became too much for him, and that’s when he retreated to his chair in the living room at home. That’s where he was for the next 13ish years.

Every time I’d visit and ask how he was he’d say, “not dead yet.”

He wanted to die; he’d lived his life, he was done.

Life had a different plan.

I notice too many people rushing through life, staying busy, and I often wonder,

what is the point of all of this?

Life will force the best of us to slow down at some point, even if it’s when we are at the very end and have no choice.

My great-grandparents worked hard so hard. They provided financially for their family, their kids, their grandkids, and their great-grandchildren.

My great grandpa was from Poland; he came here to live the American dream, and because he had a white German wife and passed as a white man, he was able to do that by building damns all over the United Stated. This is unlike the very few black men who had just been given the rights to work on damns and were treated like animals. I found a photo of a handful of black men who were not housed by the federal government as the other men were and who had to travel 30 minutes a day to get to work.

The story of segregation with the lack of civil and racial rights at the Hoover damn is what happened all over the United States and you won’t find this kind of history unless you go searching for it. If you’d like to read more in depth about it read this article.

Meanwhile, my great-grandmother worked hard to raise four children, to make all their meals, keep their home clean, live through adultery, and decades of emotional abuse. In the end, her spine collapsed. I watched her fold in half. She was the sweetest lady. He couldn’t have done everything he did without her.

I have too much to say on this topic for one short post, and I’m getting off track.

My point is the body and mind are aging with us, and how we treat them matters.

Be kind to yourself.

Treat your mind and body with care and keep them strong.

I know it isn’t easy, but the alternative is harder.