I Want My Old Life Back
/The Boston Herald
“I want my old life back.” That’s what the woman whispered between sobs.
I heard her, though I was just walking by, walking past, trying not to hear, trying not to look, not to see.
“I want my old life back,” she said again, louder this time, and I stopped walking and looked directly at her, a broken, old woman bent and weeping in a wheelchair.
It was a Sunday in February ten years ago and I was at Hollywell Nursing Home in Randolph on a mission looking for help for my own mother, who was not so old but just as broken. I had spent the day visiting nursing homes and even then knew with absolute certainty that this was one of the worst days of my life.
The woman’s husband, who was pushing the chair, patted her shoulder and looked at me with more sadness than a person’s eyes should be able to hold. “I want my old life back,” she keened this time. I lowered my head and walked on.
I have never forgotten this moment. It lives in my head reminding me that people are not born old and broken, that they don’t like being old and broken and that it’s a very short distance between here and there. When you have a sick parent, you don’t lose sight of this. But when you’re not stopping by to check on someone every day, when nursing homes and old people aren’t part of your life, it can seem as if they don’t exist.
A letter from a 77-year-old Arlington woman arrived last week. “My children were my life,” she wrote. “They still are but they are busy living their own lives. They visit and call but most of the time I’m alone.”
Alone, she puts her words on paper. Alone, she bares her soul. “I just seem to have so many thoughts and feelings in my mind, in my heart, and I try to express them,” she explained. She enclosed a poem.
“Time won’t wait
So why do I?’
It’s so lonely
I mustn’t cry.
No one wants
To hear you complain
Smile the while
Your heart’s in pain.
I’ll be thankful
For today
But I’m tired
And should be
On my way
The bell is ringing
Company’s here!
That’s what I need.
Some talk, some cheer.
Thank God, someone is here.
We think we do so much for those who cannot do for themselves. We buy them things. We pay for them to be taken care of. But it’s not a fancy new assisted living facility or a well-run nursing home that the sick and elderly want. What they want is us there with them, holding their hand the way they held ours when we were young and scared, the way they would hold ours even now if we let them.
But we don’t and we can’t, because we have jobs and husbands and wives and children and friends, and busy, crazy lives.
My mother-in-law was confined to her home for a long time before she died. I never realized she saved every card and letter anyone ever sent. I found them in a dresser drawer, in stacks, bound in elastic, well-worn, well-read. She must have looked at them often. I believe they sustained her
“Wish we could see you, Peg.” “We think about you often.” “Just a quick note to say hi.” These small offerings brought her the outside world. They didn’t bring her old life back. Nothing could have done that. But they made the life she had a little sweeter.
We cannot be our parents’ parents. We cannot be with anyone 24 hours a day. No one can. But if everyone did a little something, not just for our own mothers and fathers, but for others we know who cannot get around the way they used to, the lonely might not feel quite so alone.
