When I woke up this morning and realized that my plans for Thanksgiving had been waylaid, I decided instead to sit down and write something inspiring for the holiday. Unfortunately, I’m not feeling very inspired so intead, I’m going to cut and paste my column for this week into this space. You can see it at the newspaper web site but you’ll have to pay. The story is not actually inspiring but it does sort of finish a post I started on here a few weeks ago about an old lady we met. In that version, I was trying to be coy about her name and where she lived because she lived alone and I didn’t want anyone who might see that post to get any ideas.
A thanksgiving story.
Thanksgiving is this week and as is my habit, I thought I might produce a column about this family holiday but unfortunately, I’ve already done this so many times over the past eight or nine years that I’ve milked about all the drama out of Turkey Day that I can. So if you wanted some of that “over the river and through the woods” reminiscing, I guess you’re out of luck. There won’t be any of the good feeling that surrounds this time of year out of these words.
But all is not lost. Fortunately, one of my hobbies is being an amateur observer of the Human Condition. I developed this hobby for a couple of reasons; the first of which was my lack of exposure to human diversity. If you read this column very often, then you know of my small town upbringing in Southern Indiana where diversity in my circle of friends was scarce. This is not to say Loogootee, Indiana was not diverse; some of my acquaintances were male and others were female. Some of them were Catholic and some of them weren’t. Some were Cincinnati Reds fans while others followed the St. Louis Cardinals. We even had one poor soul who was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. I wasn’t completely ignorant of the diversity in our populace.
Another reason for my hobby became apparent when I first began to write this column; it didn’t take long to realize that my personal story was not going to be very interesting nor would it take very many issues of the paper to tell it. I needed even more diversity in my life. Thus was born my new hobby; that of meeting new people and discovering what their life was like. I suppose, were I not a journalist, you could consider me just plain nosy but I like to think of it on a higher plane; a scientist in search of a sociological answer.
I have also discovered, along with talking to new friends, that there are many life stories to be learned by reconnecting with former co-workers, relatives and old friends from my younger days. This has been enabled with the aid of e-mail, cell phone and social networking technology. I even found that it is semi-easy to talk, in one technology or another, to long lost, old girlfriends and find out how the last fifty years of life have treated them. This wasn’t a clandestine effort; my wife, Susie gave me her blessing as long as I didn’t overdo it. Since I did not have a lot of girlfriends in my youth, this wasn’t a tough edict to follow.
When I wasn’t busy reconnecting, I was meeting new people. Last week, Susie and I attended a pitch-in salad luncheon with a gathering of other retired folks at a Senior Center in Indianapolis. For you young folks who are still reading this, old people do this kind of thing all the time. We like to eat.
Diversity was not readily apparent at the lunch. Almost everyone was about our age and after talking to some of them, I found that most had similar backgrounds; job, marriage and children, usually in that order. I was about to give up on interesting stories that day until I met an elderly lady who had one to tell.
I first noticed her when a small sedan came creeping into the parking lot. I watched from the front window of the building as a tiny lady opened the door with some effort and scooted her way slowly out of the vehicle. Bent over with the tell-tale signs of osteoporosis, she made her way to the back door of the car where she tugged at the handle, finally got the door open and extracted a green shopping bag and a well worn cane from the back seat.
My decades old boy scout training urged me to help her across the parking lot so I went out and took her arm. She made her way up the ADA approved incline, cane in one hand and her shopping bag in the other and for once, I appreciated the need for that legislation. That’s not always so;there are times when I see cars with handicapped stickers parked in ADA approved spots and perfectly healthy people climbing out of them; that’s when my conservative soul flares up.
Susie and I introduced ourselves to her as we helped her negotiate the heavy front door and she responded with a grin.
“My name is Agnes and I’m 95 years old.” She told us with a note of pride in her voice, sounding a lot like me when I tell people I’m 69 years old and in all those years, have only been to King’s Island 3 times. “I didn’t expect to be here today but I made it.” She continued.
“Oh?” I said politely. “Did you have something else to do??”
“No. No. I didn’t mean just today.” She said, shaking her head. “I thought I would have been dead a long time ago but I’m not and I don’t know why. All my friends are.”
“I guess you’re just lucky.” I said.
“I don’t know if I am or not. My life, such that it is, is pretty boring. All in all, dying doesn’t look all that bad because I don’t have anyone left to talk to.”
“Well, you’re here.”
“Only because it’s a nice day. I don’t drive if it’s not.”
As our conversation went on, I learned that she had few relatives and that her son, who lives in central Indiana, had brought her to Indianapolis a few years ago from Northern Ohio. She had spent her whole life in the Cleveland area but after her husband died, her son wanted to keep an eye on her so he sat her up in a small condominium where she doesn’t know anyone. I never learned how often she sees her son’s family but I had the feeling it wasn’t very often.
Susie and I helped with fixing her lunch and the 3 of us talked for a while. I tried to think of some way to help with the lady’s loneliness but couldn’t come up with anything because we had no experience in this. Susie and I, with her being from a big family, will never run out of relatives.
We Americans like our stories to be wrapped up with happy endings in 30 or 60 minute segments but it won’t happen with this lady. Her story is not a TV drama. It’s real life and not particularly in need of some kind of action. This morning, I thought about inviting her to our Thanksgiving celebration but I don’t know her last name or even where she lives. I hope she spends the day with the family she has left and we should all do the same. Gather whatever family you have around you and thank your lucky stars you have them.
Happy Thanksgiving.
