Old folk – Part 1
They say age is just a number which I guess is true until the number stops going up, but it’s also a number of other things – not being able to remember why you went into the bedroom, needing a little blue pill once you get there (men only I think, although they may have another colour for women by now, I wouldn’t know), having a wee accident before you reach the loo, carrying around metal pins and plates to replace worn-out bones, waking up with aching joints … I could go on. But despite this inevitable deterioration of our earthly body, I for one wouldn’t like to go back to being thirty. In case you were wondering, I only suffer from a couple of the above. I won’t say which ones. But being older certainly has its upsides too (excuse the pun).
These are a few I have experienced:
I don’t seem to worry so much about things that would have bugged me in younger years; I feel less judgemental and more accepting of people with differing views (except for Donald Trump); I enjoy having the time and freedom to wake up in the morning and think, “Now what shall I do today?” Also, as we get older, the more contact we have with other old fogies, as friends and family age with us, the more we hopefully gain insight into some of the joys and the troubles that old age brings.
I thought I would tell you about some of the oldies who have enriched my life. The first is my maternal grandmother who I named Guggy when I was a 2-year-old. She raised two daughters for six years while her husband captained steamers between here and Australia, and so was at sea for most of the time. In 1929, his ship was wrecked off the Catlins coast in the South Island. There was no loss of life and he was exonerated but the stress he suffered as a result led to a heart attack at the age of forty-two. There was no single mother benefit in those days so Guggy raised her girls by working as a teller in the Farmers Trading Company in Auckland. She never remarried and eventually came to live with us in our family home and so became like a second mother to me and my siblings. We loved her dearly, especially when she brought out her trademark peanut brownies made with golden syrup, the best brownies in the world by far. She suffered horribly from arthritis but she never complained and she looked forward every year to catching the train to Rotorua and spending 3 weeks at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital arthritis unit where she would soak in the hot thermal pools daily to help with her pain.
Unfortunately for Guggy our family was a bit dysfunctional and I remember one day, when I was in my twenties, volunteering to ask her if she would consider moving to a continuing care facility. Being young, self-centred and naïve, and thinking that not living with Guggy might help our dysfunctional family dynamic, I talked to her about it. Of course, she was distraught and although she put on a brave face while she was living in the facility, I don’t think she ever forgave me for doing that. But, as life seems to dish up the unexpected, I happened to meet the future mother of my older daughter who was a nurse in Guggy’s ward. So I guess a daughter’s existence is due to that dubious decision I made decades ago – funny how the universe works. Of course, Guggy’s absence didn’t stop our family’s dysfunctionality and in fact it continued, despite concerted efforts to remedy it, right through my adulthood, up until the time when our parents died.
My other grandmother, who we called Granny, as you do, was engaged for seven years while my grandfather was away being a doctor in the trenches of Europe during World War 1.
He suffered from mustard gas poisoning and spent several years in London after the war ended, recovering and helping wounded soldiers with their rehabilitation. Granny waited for him for all those years and he eventually returned to fulfil his promise, despite rumours that he had fallen for his head nurse in the London hospital. So, Granny and Grampy had five children and the head nurse, who followed my grandfather to New Zealand, became part of the family. I don’t know if this was a trial for Granny or if she knew about their previous relationship, or even whether it continued in New Zealand, but if she did, she hid it very well. Perhaps it was a blessing for her, that her husband, who I remember as being very strict and quite grumpy, had a form of distraction to alleviate some of the pressure she may have felt. He eventually died at 60, leaving Granny to enjoy her offspring, her 15 grandchildren and eventual great grandchildren until she passed at 94.
To be continued …
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