Tag Archives: life lessons

Looking Good

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When is the last time you told someone they looked nice? When is the last time someone told you that you looked nice?

People need to be seen, not just as someone that is always there, in the house, on the street, in the meeting or even at a coffee hour. We need to take the time to notice people so they don’t feel they are ghosts among the crowd or at our household table.

It’s easy to criticize someone’s hairstyle or their unusual dress. When we do that we cut to the center of their core by making judgement on who they are. Because of it we may not see the authentic person inside the body. They may hide it and become the person they think society expects them to be, so their feelings aren’t hurt, or they aren’t cut to the core by mean words.

We all have been the purveyor of mean words and targeted those that we see as different than us. We all share the blame. Not only does it extend to what we wear, our hairstyle choices, but also our lifestyle choices of gender. How many of those we love have been afraid to show us who they are in all circumstances because of the way we might behave toward them?

I look back on my life and realize for much of it I haven’t always been authentic. The older I got the more I yearned to let that impish and creative part of me out. I began to do that in my books, and in the last house I had. You can still drive by and see the river I painted down my steps. And many other projects that were a little crazy. I haven’t always spoke out when the good ole boys ridiculed people, especially women because of their weight and because of their looks. I laughed along with them, not because I thought it was funny but because I wanted to belong, and I didn’t want it to turn on me. I am sorry I did not speak out sooner when these things were happening, but I was scared because I didn’t have a good sense of who I was in this world.

We also wear our past. I remember high school when a boy by the name of Bill, in the class ahead of me, one day telling me I was the ugliest girl he had ever seen. It changed how I interacted with people for a short time, especially boys. I couldn’t believe anyone would like me or date me.

As an adult and writing a column for the Albert Lea Tribune, I received a letter from someone telling me how ugly my crazy picture that represented me was, and…that I was an ugly little girl, I had no friends then, and I had no friends now. They didn’t sign it. The difference between the boy in school and the letter in my adult life was that I knew I had friends in school, and I knew I had friends as an adult, and I knew people liked my column. I had the compliments, the maturity and the confidence to handle it.

I’ve had wonderful groups of friends through the years. We forged a solid bond but I must say they were very respectable friends, and I am not sure they appreciated when my weird side came out, but they never let me know that. That is a good friend.

However, I’ve always been drawn to those unique personalities that have a little of the wild side in them. I had a couple of walk on the wild side friends right after I graduated from high school and I found a part of myself I didn’t know, but I let go of that side as I lived my life. When I moved I reconnected with that fun when I met my new friend, who I will call her K. She had many illnesses but she kept on going, and had a wild sense of humor, a what you see is what you get personality, and I felt alive after a very long drought. I never knew what she was going to come up with and when she was going to knock on my door and drag me into one of her crazy escapades, such as getting the tanning bed she had been hiding under her bed, out of her apartment and down the street, under a sheet that made it look as if a ghost was flitting across our parking lot. And it was Halloween. She woke me up again to fun in life.

What does have to do with telling someone they look good? She was good at compliments and not just with me. I noticed those that were silent and didn’t speak, and that a compliment made them smile. Elderly people do not get compliments much. Every day we may see the same people and take them for granted, and not see who they are and how a compliment may be the only bright spot in their day. It also may change how they see themselves when they get ready for the day.

Take notice of the people in your life. Have they given up because they feel it doesn’t matter as no one notices them anyway? One day last fall I was at a brewery, yes a brewery, with a friend, and a stranger at another table told me, “You have a beautiful smile.” It made my day and it made me want to smile more and pass it along.

Have you seen a house for sale in your community and you wondered where it was? You realize you’ve driven by that house every single day on the way to work and you’ve never noticed it. It’s the same with people. We don’t see those that are right in front of us, especially the quiet ones. I am anything but quiet, and I am rejoicing in learning new things about myself that I’ve hidden every single day. Part of the reason I think I did that was because I thought I might embarrass my family with my wacky ideas so I wouldn’t be accepted. We shouldn’t do that. The loud people, like me are seen, but it’s those we don’t take the time to notice that need our caring and attention, especially our family.

We live in a world where hate is being thrown at us right and left on our social media. We don’t know what’s real and not, and the bots are attacking people causing some of them to take their life. It’s a helpless feeling. Maybe all we can do is give someone smile or a compliment, especially those who we take their presence for granted. It may help them get through their day. Maybe all we can do each day is find something good about them, and let them know they are valued, or boost their confidence by a kind word. Let’s feed them with kind words about themselves.

When is the last time you told someone they looked nice? When is the last time someone told you, you looked nice?

The Test of Time

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Joe wheeled up to the table each night in his motorized wheelchair. He always moved at a fast pace. I and the other residents sitting on the opposite side of the table would grab our dishes, because occasionally he cruised into the table sending things flying. Joe always smiled and chuckled when that happened, with an excuse that he knew we wouldn’t believe.

Joe

Most of us sitting around the table and in the independent and assisted living where we lived told stories of home. In our hearts we wished we could be back there. Joe was no different, but he had accepted assisted living was where he needed to be. His outgoing personality and witty remarks lit up the place.

I remember one conversation about moving away from where he lived his life. Joe said he missed his home in a neighboring town but there was nothing left for him there. All his friends were dead. There was sadness in his voice as he remembered those he shared his life and memories with.

Joe died a few months ago but I’ll never forget him or that conversation. When we’re young, death hits us, especially if it is a close friend or relative. I know it did me, but as I grow older I understand more the repercussions it has on those of us that are up there in age.

Many years ago, right after my husband and I were married, I noticed that whenever my mother-in-law picked up the paper she immediately turned to the obituaries. I thought it was kind of morbid, but at the time she told me it was because she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss sending a sympathy card or attending a funeral of friends that died.

Joe’s statement and my mother-in-laws words come back to me while pondering grief. I now understand. At our age friends and family leave us frequently for their heavenly home, sometimes numerous times a week. There’s more to it than mourning the person who was a part of our life for most of our years. It’s not having that person to talk to that shares your history. Each person shares a unique part of us that no one else can claim. Conversations, experiences good and bad, might only be shared with one or two people.

The other day I thought about the video of a unique funeral given for my cousin, Charlie, when he died. He used to take his four wheeler and travel in the mountain paths near his home in Northern California. That’s where they held his funeral, amongst the mountains and grasses and flowers high up in a place he loved. I wanted to share my thoughts with my cousin, Martha. She and I had watched the videotape together the first time. But Martha is having a conversation in heaven with Charlie along with all my other first cousins on my dad’s side. I can’t share my memories of those California times with anyone else that shared them with me.

A photo took me back to a memory of my high school years. Karen was one of my best friends in grade school and high school and beyond. Karen died when she was 39 and I still miss her, and I miss our conversations about our high school adventures. I could relate them to others but they wouldn’t get it because they weren’t there.

I asked my sister by another mother, Mary, if she wanted to come back and be my date at my next class reunion. Though she graduated a year after I did, we shared many of the same friends. It would be 55 years for me. Mary pointed out that the people she and I created most of our memories with were probably having their reunion in heaven.

My point? We mourn those we lose: family members, friends and acquaintances, but there is so much more under the grief. We also mourn the loss of someone who shared experiences, high points and low points of our lives. There is something sacred in being able to go down memory lane with a friend, or a family member, who are the only ones that share that same memory. Memories of the past that can’t be shared with your special person anymore leaves one feeling lonely. When you get to be the age I and many others are, there are more that shared your history who are gone than are alive.

Like Joe, we realize our tribe is getting smaller. I have a hunch when you hear that an older person is lonely and you encourage them to get out more, or participate more, that the loneliness is on a deeper level. We can be in a crowd of people, enjoying ourselves, making new friends, but yet there is deep loneliness that shares a place in the heart with heartfelt memories. It is a loneliness that can’t be replaced with activity, new friends or even a beautiful attitude. It is the loneliness of memories we can’t share with the ones that helped us create those past moments.

I sometimes get lonely when listening to music of my past because I remember where I was and who I was with when the music played. Yet, I also smile, sing and am thankful for who I got to share my past with. It’s a catch-22 moment and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I haven’t quite accepted this is where I am in my life. As I made out sympathy cards this morning, too many for one week, these thoughts whirled about in my mind. I know I’m not alone. It’s the passage of time and it goes fast.

It takes a long time as the saying goes, to grow old friends. The people we now meet will become friends but we’ll share a new, shorter history. It doesn’t mean they are less important in our lives, but that we don’t have the years left to build a long history.

Recently I was watching a tv interview after a tragedy, and the person being interviewed said, “If I had known that would be the last time I would be talking to him I might have taken more time to talk.” Sadly we all feel that way at some point. And it also scares us. The fragility in our lives.

I take comfort in a memory that happened while my mother was in her last days. She was smiling the biggest smile ever. Her attention was on a corner of the room. My mom was the last of her family, her five brothers preceding her in death. I asked her why she was smiling and she said, “Because I am going to see my mom and dad and my brothers soon.” The memory of the moment gives me comfort that she knew and saw something we didn’t.

There is a thankfulness in our memories even while we feel the loneliness from those we lost. We have lived, made the memories, and met and shared lives with those old friends, and because of what we shared we have been blessed in our lives on our road to becoming senior saints as they call us older folks in my church.

“The thing is, when you see your old friends, you come face to face with yourself. I run into someone I’ve known for 40 to 50 years and they’re old. And I suddenly realize I’m old. It comes as an enormous shock to me.

~~Polly Bergan