Our senior citizens from the outgoing generation (those born near the first major disease outbreak or Spanish Flu era through around the 1930s) are disappearing in large numbers now. As of 2018, the last year in which data was collected, men and women over age 85 died at the rate of roughly 15,000 and 13,000 people per 100,000 in the population, respectively, according to Statista.com.
These are the men who defeated the Nazis in World War II and the women who worked by their sides, whether it was active duty military, working as substitutes in the civilian workforce or maintaining the home. Their social media was the local bar or pool hall, the fraternal clubhouse, round robin phone calls, the white picket fence, or the weekly card game. Bands played brass instruments, not electric guitars, and wore suits. Women wore dresses. Speech was educated and tempered by decorum, and manners were the norm. When they dwindle to their last, we will have lost possibly the last reminders of what our country was like before we advanced beyond restraint and began to lose our sense of place.
I was reminded of this when a good friend of my mother’s became lost to me this past week. I had called her on Easter and learned from her that she was soon leaving, though to where exactly (likely a senior retirement facility) was unknown at the time. Her remaining family were beginning to see, as I was, that her advancing age was putting her at a disadvantage living as a widow in a small apartment in isolation. They decided to uproot her and bring her home to Pennsylvania.
The process was amazingly swift. So much so that I had no time to say goodbye. My attempt to phone her was met with a recording stating the phone was no longer in service. Her family probably wanted to yank off the emotional band-aid and get the inevitable over with, which is understandable. Such decisions never are easy or enjoyable to execute. I quickly wrote out a card and put it in the mail, hoping it will be forwarded and we can stay in touch.
Her departure means I have no more Thanksgiving or Christmas meal planning to do this year; I may never have a turkey breast, pork or eye roast again, which may be good for my weight but not for my emotional balance. Before her and my mother’s circles of acquaintances began disappearing, we made it a point to visit each other for holidays, so I invited her over for both holidays last year (and took New Year’s off) because her living quarters had shrunk from a roomy and sunny full kitchen in her former house to a circle of appliances one had to turn in by degrees to use. Even with a difference in our ages of three decades, her presence in my life was special to me.
So many of our elderly are walking their last miles feeling disassociated or totally alone. It is not how anybody should live their final days. When I see a senior, I always try to acknowledge them; they are the last of a great era and embody everything we’ve forgotten about what a simpler, happier life was like.
We should have been learning from them all this time, for soon they will all be gone.
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