A World Less My Own

These days I feel like I'm "living in a world that is a little less my own."

Some days I think "where have all my people gone?" Actually, I know where they've gone. If you live long enough you will find yourself without family and old friends.

Bob is one of ten children and only two remain. I'm an only child much younger than all my cousins and no one remains.

There are also losses worse than death. A family member lost in the chaos of Alzheimers.

Yet I resist moving to communities or facilities designed only for seniors. Surely there must be a way to be adopted into this newer unfamiliar world, a world full of people with hope for tomorrow, people with full lives ahead of them.

There must be a place for seniors who still have hope, who prefer looking to the future rather than reliving the past.

The task before me now is to be a senior young people want to be around. These are some things I've thought of and my hope is you will have other suggestions.

1) Stay current on news and world events.
2) Read current books, see current movies, be familiar with current TV series.
3) Relive the past in private, not in public.
4) Talk little about aches and pains.
5) Exercise, walk, gym, treadmill, something.
6) Be sensitive to the situation before giving advice gained from past experience.
7) Be computer savvy. This is the age of Internet.
8) Be sensitive to when it's appropriate to talk about memories and tell stories from long ago.

I see I have some major gaps in this list. It's not my desire to hide my age but rather to display it in good taste. Now, how do you suggest I go about updating myself?

Grief and Nostalgia

This past year Bob's twin brother died at age 83.  We have all grieved in our own way and in very different ways.  Bob's grief was profound, no doubt because it was his twin.  The grief process that I'm most affected by though seems to be his widow's, my sister-in-law.

You see we've been in this family together for a very long time.  We're more like sisters than sister-in-laws.  It surprises me I'm having such a hard time with her grief.

Nostalgia is not my thing, never has been.  She, on the other hand is very nostalgic.  Frankly it makes me uncomfortable.  We talk often.  Frequently she is playing music from the era when they were young and dating.  I think this is very comforting to her.  She spends a lot of time going through old pictures reminiscing.  She tells me many stories from the past.  I am most troubled though by the stories about her marriage.  They simply are not factual.  It would be most unkind and unthinkable of me to call her hand on these stories and remind her they actually fought like hell every day of the 59 years they were married.

I'm wondering if nostalgia is knitting together a set of happy marriage memories where she can find comfort.  I would not want to take that away from her.  Could some of this be about regrets?  She often advises me to touch Bob more, to spend more time with him, not to argue or quarrel with him.

I'm wondering what I will do if this kind of grief should ever come to me. I believe in looking back only for what can be learned from the past, never to dwell on it or relive it.  I don't have a lot of photos or spend a lot of time looking at the ones I have.  I wonder if I'll spend a lot of time reliving the years I was married?  I don't think I will but I don't know. I can't imagine I will have a lot of regrets.  While our marriage is not perfect it's always been vastly different than theirs.

Are you nostalgic about the past?  If so what am I missing?