Day 138

Saturday started slow and didn’t get past snail pace. Darn it all, waking up with a migraine, medicating, and then feeling dull are not my ideas of how to spend time. I may go to church. Didn’t go last week. I’m feeling detached from St. Paul’s. In the meantime, the rain is back and wet enough so I don’t need to water. I did pull a few weeds yesterday. The gophers ate some potatoes and pea vines. I love my gardens.

POH

Sitting with Dona 

Our longtime friends came from Idaho for the Fourth of July week to complete the business of selling property. Laurie’s mother, Dona, lives with them and came on the trip. Rod and Laurie did not want Dona to go to the house that was once hers so they asked me to sit with her while they loaded up whatever they wanted to keep. Laurie and my daughter Hollie have been friends since seventh grade and Dona and I have been friends nearly that long. Dona is 87 years old and frail. I am 81, active, essentially healthy and grateful for it.

As we sat together she began to tell me about her life and revealed her fears about her health and her awareness that she is losing her mental capacity. She expressed anger and frustration and impatience with her circumstances. We commiserated about our aging bodies and lost energy to complete the activities that were our favorites like gardening and sewing. She grieved her growing dependence on others to help with the most basic of tasks. The most heartfelt need she expressed was for a friend. Both of us have wonderful daughters. We could have searched the world and not found better ones anywhere. But, they are a generation younger and despite our mutual histories, there are differences in our requirements for a full life. Oh, she said, remember how we could sit and talk for hours and now I have no one. If only I had one friend my age, my life would be better. We need to be with people who had the same presidents, the same wars, the same struggles, the same music, and all the rest. We don’t need to be sat down and left alone. Yes, they bring me food, wash my clothes, take me to the doctor, they bought me a lift chair, and all that, but they are not companions, they are care-takers who feel obligated. They forget that we need a friend.