The Gift of Elderly People

A couple years ago I started working at a retirement home. On my first or second day I was looking through the resident files to get to know the people I would be working with. I was absolutely astounded with what I saw. Two thirds of the people had been part of the army during WW2, from foot soldiers to air force pilots to explosives engineers. There was even a elderly woman living there who had been a bomb technician. I didn't even think women could do that back then.

Not to mention people who had built business empires from nothing. Writers, painters, travellers, politicans.

I was amazed that all these incredible individuals were hiding out in a nursing home in Richmond Hill. Sometimes I think we forget that elderly people, although frail and confined now, lived really vibrant lives. And the people that accomplished great things in their younger years are still there. They're just slowed down by the effects of aging. Many of them keep to themselves and enjoy bingo and reading, but they are fonts of information on all kinds of topics if you ask them. Decades and decades of knowledge stored away, remaining mostly untapped.

I remember one man who spent the majority of his time dozing off in the common room. One day I began talking to him about his family and his hobbies and he mentioned how he enjoyed painting. I asked him if I could see some paintings and he was delighted that I was interested. We went into his room and as I walked through the door I saw paintings everywhere of landscapes from across Canada. Painting was not a hobby; it had been his profession for his whole life after the war. There were newspaper clippings scattered here and there from when he had been interviewed, or from when he had opened art exhibits or had special events. He called me over to the window where he showed me his current project. He sat in front of it and picked up his brush and began to paint. Despite the fact that his hands shook uncontrollably when he tried to feed himself or hold the newspaper, his lines and strokes could not have been more precise when he held his paintbrush and brought it to the canvas. It was such a beautiful sight.

There was another woman I spent quite a bit of time with because she was a sharp lady and she reveled in conversation. At age 96, she was mobile, self-sufficient, and full of wit and sarcasm. She enjoyed telling me about the love of her life (who she swore looked just like Humphrey Bogart), and about the travel she did by herself as a young woman. She woke up promptly everyday at 6:30 am and braided her long white hair down her back and whipped around the retirement home on her walker like a "spring chicken".

I learned more about life and the world from the aging people that I worked with then I did from my actual classes that year in high school. As they got to know me, they enjoyed talking to me about my educational and vocational plans. While my grade 12 teachers were encouraging me to be practical and make plans for my future, my old people friends were telling me to take chances and be reckless because "you never get the time back, sweetheart" and "life never goes how you plan".

Elderly people are full of life experience. They're the most learned of souls on the planet. I don't know why they aren't considered the best teachers and the people we would want to spend the most amount of time with. As a society I think we seriously need to treasure our elderly beauties more.