Growing Old – A Precious Time
Everything Changes: Everything Ages
(Buddhist Wisdom)
The friends at Meadow Lakes Retirement Community have been talking about how they first realized they were old. (Go to www.theboobgirls.com and read the last blog to catch up.) Mary Rose McGill fell in the bathroom, Hadley Joy Morris-Whitfield mowed a strip across her front lawn and knew it wasn’t fun anymore, it was work. Robinson Leary knew she was getting old the first time she sat down beside her husband’s grave, Alphonso Greatwood imagined a banner across the entrance to the retirement community: Welcome. You’re Old Now.
Alphonso turned to Raven. “You’re Apache. Apaches have anything to say about getting old?”
Raven smiled, looked around at his friends and said, “I am a wisdom keeper. Those of us who are aging carry the wisdom and tradition of the tribe. Wisdom says, ‘All things change. Al things age. Every day we are changing in some way. Every day we age. Our wisdom says we live best when we accept the changes as best we can and that we embrace growing old, whatever challenges it brings. The one thing we have that is truly ours is our life. Your life is yours. Whatever happens, it is what it is. It becomes what you make of it.”
He saluted the group with his bottle of beer.
It is what it is. It becomes what you make of it.
They were quiet. Hadley gave a soft chuckle. “Remember what we first committed to when we first came together and became the BOOB Girls?”
They looked at her.
“We determined to live our lives with GRACE, HUMOR COURAGE and CONFIDENCE.”
“I need all four of those,” Mary Rose said, smiling for the first time and taking a sip of her wine.
“I’ve got the humor,” Marge Aaron put in. “I realized I was getting older when I had to wear one of those awful, super-tight stockings to keep my leg from swelling.” She looked around the patio at her friends. “It was terrible. The weather was hot. My leg started to itch, and I reached deep into the stocking to scratch the itch and the ring on my right caught on the inside of the stocking. No way could I get my hand out of that stocking.”
Robbie grinned. “Bummer.”
“My right hand was stuck,” Marge continued. “I was sitting in a chair and couldn’t get up without using that hand. Lucky for me, I had my phone in my lap, so I called Willie the Creep.” “Willie the Creep?” Mary Rose asked with a grin.
“Willie the Creep,” Marge said. “Willie was one of my informants when I was a detective and the best B and E man around.”
“Breaking and Entering,” Hadley clarified.
“Yep,” Marge replied. “Willie came over, took him less than 20 seconds to get through both locks on my well-locked door. He poured himself a cup of coffee, came into the bedroom, took out his switchblade, cut the stocking off, kissed the top of my head, turned and went out the door with my favorite coffee mug.”
“Small price to pay,” Wiley Vondra said.
Hadley refilled the girls’ wine glasses.
Wiley spoke up, “I got two messages I was getting old twice on the same day.” He smiled at Mary Rose. “I was down on the floor putting a table together, and I realized that every time I got down on the floor I needed a plan to get up,”
They chuckled. Alphonso nodded.
“Then,” Wiley went on, “that same day I went to a department store and found myself singing along with the elevator music.”
“Everything changes. Everything ages.” Marge rubbed her knee as she said it. “Now we need to look at how we deal with those changes.”
With Grace Humor Courage and Confidence
(To be continued.)
In the next few weeks, we will take a serious look at aging and how best to embrace it.
Pass this on to other seasoned women who will enjoy it.
Joy’s Stories
“I want to be with those women!”
So many times, we first realize we’re getting older when our parents die. My father died when I was 22 years old. It seemed natural then. My mother died when I was 56. I remember thinking, “I’m an orphan now,” For many of us, it’s a death or an illness that reminds us we are aging. Other times for me, it’s when I look at my son. He is now the same age as my father when he died. Jim, my son, has gray hair. He is talking about retiring in four years. I am hoping I am alive to go to his retirement party. It isn’t morbid or sad, it’s just a fact. My two girls, Jenny and Janet, are in their fifties, and since they both do loving work in animal rescue, they are, “manypaws-al.”
A friend died last week. She died with the BOOB Girls’ motto:
Grace Humor Courage and Confidence.
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