Life Lessons I Learned From Working With The Elderly Part 2

I am a caregiver to the elderly. Most of my cases are ninety and over. I listen to everything they say and complained about. I also can hear what they don’t say.

Mark Sanford, Ph. D. wondered, “I’m interested that you work with 90 yr. olds. I am getting up there myself and am starting to write an experiential, first person account of what it is like to enter the Kingdom of the elderly.”

Humans can slow down aging by how they live and take care of their bodies, minds, hearts, and souls. Also, how they handle their mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological health. How they love and hate too. Our lives are connected to every action, choice, and decision made.

Living with these ninety-year-olds, I witnessed life unfolding and relived many times in many ways that awe me.

I go back into their lives, again, as me with many of the memories they shared. Along with the assistance of wisdom and the knowledge of the consequences of their actions.

My brain is programmed to remember ‘naughty = cruelty, thoughtlessness, etc. Nice = kindness and love etc. Weird = the reasons behind the actions, choices, and decisions of some humans. This area is wide. Everything else is lost in transition.

Aging takes a lot from them, including one of the most significant things that hurt both the elderly and their families. Plus, any friends they have left alive.

MEMORIES!

I realized that many elderly people are living on memories.

The song says, ‘memories don’t live like people do. They always stay with you.’

He is wrong. Aging is one of the most significant things that interferes with our memories.

The elderly I take care of, are living on years of memories. Not all of them are happy or correct.

In youth, our lives seem to be behind us, as there are so many life lessons to learn.

Weird comes in now.

As we age, our past lives seem to be facing us along with lessons and mistakes. Not only for us to see and regret, but the world too.

How did our past lives get shoved to the front of our lives?

Many of these elderly people made many attempts to relive their past, hoping to create better memories.

Why does aging change our lives, living, thinking, actions, choices, and the decisions we make?

Our decline in years comes with a wealth of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, etc. Heck, it’s a manual that should guide and protect the individual for the rest of their lives.

Memories of how to use the past as a manual take that away with the help of aging.

My 101-year-old case doesn’t need glasses. She is almost fifty years older than I. I need glasses.

She lived in a past world where her memory comes alive and is active and comfortable. A world she can connect with.

The elderly lived in a world they knew.

We call it their own world.

All of us have our own world that we are pulled into for whatever reason.

Life is a fight at every age. Reasons strengthen our fight and us. Life sometimes weakens us, for a reason.

Aging is one of the elements that weaken us, forcing us to choose the world we know and can connect with.

Sadly, it’s a world of the past.

I realized that it’s not always about the various diseases the elderly is diagnosed with. Weaken by aging and robbed of better memories, the brain will go to a familiar place where it can survive.

I don’t have the answers, I am just learning from the elderly I take care of.

Please, take care of your brain, to maintain memories.

Live a good life to preserve happy and positive memories.

Live well, so that you can live with your actions, choices, and decisions as you age.

Thank you for reading this piece.