The comraderie of the old is a thing to behold.
We aren't suffering for nothing!! We are building comraderie.
Even as we lose the finer point of good judgement about our grooming.
It is becoming more and more about comraderie.
I could tell Ardith thought she looked good in that pastel blue gettie-up she was wearing! An easy gettie-up it was, not exactly casual, but a few steps down from casual to very comfy....very comfy. It was the orange shoes that were startling. Or were those shoes? I don't know. Need to clean my glasses, I guess.
Another friend, Joleena, is not quite as old as I, but hey, this woman has lost the finer point of good judgement also. At lunch last week I was shocked to see she has had BOTOX. Her entire face looked like.....well, wrinkles, even one wrinkle, would have been a GREAT improvement.
But both of us are into building comraderie these days, being as how we are both old (even though I am older). We know comraderie is better than truth so we both told each other how great we looked and rapidly turned our attention to the dip and chips. I noticed the teenage designs on her multicolored fingernails, but before I could process what drove her to do that, I choked on a HOT little pepperocini in my salad and then had an allergic reaction to it.....I thought I was going to die.
Joleena is a nurse, but her hands have tremors anymore so she couldn't help me,
but being a nurse and all, she was understanding and calm as I made a spectacle of myself.
Finally I was able to swallow some benadryl.
The spectacle of the choking event and the spectacle of the teenie-bopper fingernails were not mentioned. We were comrades.
Back to Ardith.
Ardith was recalling her recent adventure with a cardboard box. It was a really big box but she knew if she took it to Walmart's dumpster she could rid herself of it.
Once at the Walmart dumpster she found she could not get the big box into the dumpster.
Puzzling about what to do, she stood mute while an old man hollered at her, "Honey, you are going to have to stomp that box up before trying to fit it in!" (Ardith still has a small waistline so men still call her honey.) Ardith told me she was so happy for the advice that pulled her out of mental stall, and she started stomping the box only to find it did NOT cave. An old woman passing by hollered, "Hey, girl! There is styrofoam in that box! You have to remove the styrofoam first!" So Ardith obeyed. She stomped up the box and shoved it into the dumpster.
"There I stood", she said, "beside a slab of thick stryofoam as big as the cardboard box."
Another old woman got out of her car near-by and said, "I make styrofoam crafts and I am on the way to the landfill to dump off my left-overs. I can take that styrofoam also if you want."
Ardith thanked her.
"My god," Ardith said dejectedly to me. "It took a whole team to assist me getting rid of one cardboard box!"
"Team work", I said. "We have arrived at a time in life when it takes a whole team to make a sentence."
***
Experiencing old age is like working the night shift at the hospital, where comraderie reigns supreme because it does take a whole team working together to figure out what to do next! How to do it!
Even what TIME it is!
We love ALL our team mates who work nights with us! Every single fragment of functioning brain power is needed and appreciated. Human fraility is understood and accepted.
We are sleep-deprived comrades.
Oops. Occasionally we drift off.
But we are all in it together so our comrades stick by us.
The goal is to let no patient die on our shift and to keep the boat floating until the day shift arrives. Simple goals, amazing outcomes, because the sun does come up.
We seniors aren't suffering for nothing!! We are building comraderie on this twilight landscape where we have landed, not having died young.
Think of it as working the night shift, where only the things that really matter matter. And even those things that really matter are in jeopardy of losing their foothold.
Keep in mind that the sun does rise in the morning......
and moonlight has its gifts.
Thank you, comrade,
I appreciate your visit.
Riverwatch
