Voice from the Past -- Still Present

My mother's dear friend Janet Krause sent me a letter.  It's such a joy to hear from her!

She will turn 98 in September.  That reminds me that my mother might still be with us, were it not for the Alzheimer's.  Janet's friends and family will gather to celebrate.  

She writes, "I have trouble remembering names--faces I know."

As I wrote to her:

"You represent my mother Evelyn and so many others.  Because of you they are still with us in some sense.  The times you all lived through together--the Depression and World War II and the 1950s--are more vivid in our memory because they are still in your memory."

Janet and Evelyn were nursing students together at Children's Hospital in Denver in the late 1930s. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Evelyn became a Navy nurse and Janet became an Army nurse.

Janet had surgery for breast cancer two years ago--and beat it!  Yay!

She spent a few months with her daughter in Colorado over the winter holidays but then returned to her apartment in an independent living facility in Mitchell, South Dakota.

"I have a collection of 82 hats hanging in my bedroom--all of which I have worn over the years," she writes.  She and her husband LeRoy both liked antiques.

Janet served as an Army nurse during World War II.  

See an article about her amazing experiences in The Daily Republic of Mitchell, SD, August 29, 2006.  Bombs fell around her as she and others waded ashore in France to provide medical care during the Battle of the Bulge.

https://kh057.k12.sd.us/images/World%20War%20II%20-%20B.pdf

My mother would have turned 97 on March 12. Her cousin Walter's wife Aline Pera turned 100 last August. My mother-in-law will turn 94 in September.

May we treasure these living memorials of a time fast fading.  

See also: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAVES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Nurse_Corps

Gracious Aging

Living into the 90s and experiencing ups and downs as health declines and fails is quite a trial.

I'd like to report, however, that I have one friend who is negotiating these ups and downs with relative good cheer.  

She's 99% ready to leave this earth but also very patient with the day-to-day indignities.  I'm amazed that she is not angry or sad.

Most younger people look at the problems of extreme old age and hope their lives will end earlier.

Perhaps because I spent four years accompanying my mother on this journey, I myself view being in an assisted living residence with equanimity.  It's a peaceful life surrounded by others without the kinds of worries and pressures that plague earlier years.  (A skilled nursing facility, on the other hand, is not good news.  It's more of a warehouse where people are pieces of meat, showered roughly, wheeled in and out of meals whether or not their false teeth may be in their mouths.)

What seems unendurable today--such as wearing Depends--can become just another event later if one lives in a cheerful place with kind caregivers.

When I was in my twenties, in the 1970s, I was close to my grandmother and observed her dealing with cataract surgery.  It seemed awful to me to have a surgeon cutting into one's eyes.

Today my perspective has changed.  I'm 67 and starting to feel the effects of growing old.

I didn't feel old when I got my Medicare card, or when I started collecting Social Security or began noticing increasing wrinkles and gray hair.   

Yesterday, however, when I sat in my ophthalmologist's office and scheduled a cataract surgery, it happened.  I'm where my grandmother was, and now I know I am old.