A Pension of Experiences and Memories

Turning 63 yesterday, as I undeniably did, I reflected that I really should have some wisdom worth sharing at this point. I mean, I’ve been around the sun a few times, saw my quota of good stuff and bad. Isn’t it about time I had something useful to share? 'Insightful' might be stretching it, but there really should be something.

Okay, well let’s try for a little something. It ain’t gonna be much, I can promise you that but, come on, we’re talking 63 years old now, I’ve gotta start dispensing some kind of wisdom soon or else it’ll simply be too late.

And, if you’re not there yourself already, let me tell you a little something I’ve discovered about being 63. It’s a darned sight older than 62.

Maybe it’s just me and the year I’ve had (fairly well documented in these pages). Maybe it’s just a general truism. Whatever it is, and I know I’ve only been in it for one day, but 63 starts to feel a little old. Maybe it won’t feel so old tomorrow (here’s hoping) maybe it will feel even worse. I’ll keep you posted.

So, we’d better get to that wisdom of mine before I fall down on the ground (again).

It’s pretty basic and well-trodden stuff, to be honest. And I didn’t come to it solely on account of my advancing year-count. In truth, I got to it via that well-documented ‘falling down’ I experienced in January of this year.

As a key part of recovering from that incident, I was required to spend some time as a resident in a physical rehab unit, where I mastered the art of walking all over again. Said rehab unit – a most excellent place with most excellent people – also doubled effectively as the main old-folks home in the town. So, for that recovery period, I lived alongside the residential elderly, and, for a time, I was as incapable and in need of care as any of them.

My point here is that I got a fair taste of that it is like to be an elderly person who lives in a care facility. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not old and I don’t think of myself as being old, I’m only 63 for God’s sake. But the experience I had gave me an opportunity to draw back the veil on that life and see what it is really like. And, for what it’s worth, I’m here to tell you that it’s not all that bad. The care is good and, most importantly, delivered at a human level. The food isn’t bad at all, and the people try to make you feel like one of the team rather then the target of the exercise.

There’s a TV Show called The Rehearsal where the central guy goes to extraordinary lengths to recreate locations and scenarios so that people can play out life events in a contrived environment to perhaps learn how best to deal with those events. I feel that’s kind of what I did during my time in rehab. I got to play at being old and infirm. I got to do ‘elderly lite’.

And before I share with you what I think I learned best on my ‘elderly lite’ programme, I need to acknowledge one thing that effects everything about my own experience. Apart from a few days early on, where long-term scenarios were being less positively predicted, my time among the elderly and infirm was coloured by one critical piece of knowledge. I was always getting better and I was always going back home. I have to respect the people I met there, who are still there and may always be there. Theirs is a different path to the one I walked, and I know this to be true and I respect it.

But my experience seems to have taught me something or, at the very least, reinforced something I may have always known.

And it is this:

As you move towards retirement, you try to amass some kind of little pension. An investment to see you through the remaining years (hopefully decades) of your life. I think there is another pension you contribute towards, even if you don’t know you’re doing it, and it is a pension of experiences and memories.

The reason I know more about it now is because I drew rather heavily on it when I was in my rehab place. Even in those early days when my life seemed potentially permanently altered, the old memory pension gave me something that I could usefully spend. I thought of the things I had done in my then-62 years. The people I had met. The people I love. The places I’ve been and the various bits and pieces I managed to do. And, perhaps critically, I found myself to be largely satisfied with what I found, there in my account.

Something kept me positive and mostly upbeat during that whole rather rocky time, and I put a lot of it down to that memory pension of mine. I have done a lot and if, for some reason, I didn’t get to do very much more, then the memories and the experiences were things I could draw on to warm me and lull me to peaceful sleep.

And finally, back on my feet again, rocking and rolling, there is an increased drive and incentive to get some more contributions into this virtual pension of mine. I don’t need to go into orbit or descend into the depths of the ocean. I don’t need to jump out of a plane or go to see Timbuktu. I know it sounds mawkish and a bit trite, but I see the leaves on the trees in full summer bloom, and I see them more clearly that I did last year. I will see them this way in my head if a day should come when I will not see them anymore.

So that's my advice to you, as I head boldly into 64. Pay into your memory and experience pension. If the choice arises to do something or to not do something... do it. 

Some day, your pension will pay out for you.

Drink With That?

Here’s something that annoys and rattles me hugely but which I’m trying to be better about.

A little background. Friday night is takeaway night in our little house-of-two. There are a few options but one is more oft used than the others and I’ll be there twice a month at least. They know me well there and so this thing doesn’t arise very often and, believe me when I say, that’s a very good thing.

But when there’s someone new behind the counter, at the till, and I step up to give in my carefully worked out order, well, this will almost inevitably happen.

“Can I have an ‘x’ and a small portion of ‘y’ and a…?”.

Sorry but I’m not comfortable with giving you my actual order here. There are levels of personal exposure than I am quite content with but telling you my order is several steps too far for my liking. Swap in your own preferences, you’ll get the gist.

“… and a little container of ‘z’?”

This is good. I’m half-way through my order now and all is going swimmingly. But the person behind the counter is new and doesn’t know me like the veterans do. Let’s assume she’s a girl for ease of pronoun management. It usually is, so let’s hope that’s forgivable.

I continue.

“And then could I have - “

But she has already weighed in, interjected, just as I feared she would.

“Would you like a drink with that?” she asks. Innocent, helpful, no doubt following the management script.

And now I am completely flummoxed. I cannot continue with my order. Not because I am a fool and can’t cope with the simple enquiry. Well… maybe there’s a bit of that. But, mostly, it’s something else.

“What is it Ken?” I can almost hear you cry.

It’s an amalgam of two different things.

The first is a small rage that billows immediately inside of me. My mind, my internal narrative, on one side of my mind, says something like this:

“No, I don’t want a fucking drink. And let me give you a clue as to why you should already have intuited that I don’t want a drink. BECAUSE I DIDN’T FUCKING ASK FOR ONE!  I have a mouth. Look, here it is. Right here. I also have a brain. You can’t see it, but I assure you it is in there somewhere and my communication with you should be proof enough that it resides somewhere there in my skull. So, if, and/or when, I want a drink you may rest assured I am well capable of alerting you to that fact. But, no, wait, perhaps you would like to just start off and read the entire menu out loud to me and I can try to emit some kind of a grunt whenever you get to something I might like. HOW WOULD THAT BE FOR YOU?”

That’s one side of my mind.

At the same time, the other side of my mind is saying something like this:

“Calm down. The girl is only asking if you want a drink. It’s not a hanging offence. There are three obvious reasons why she is doing this. 1) She is trying to save me money. The addition of a drink turns my order into a ‘meal’ and will work out cheaper than if I order it separately. 2) She is following the instructions she received at her training and 3) She is upselling a little bit, doing her part to keep the takeaway in profit and open for business. There’s no need to be angry and don’t even think about berating or even being mildly sarcastic with her. JUST GET OVER IT."

The effect of these two alternate internal narratives playing out simultaneously has this interesting side effect of rendering me completely speechless. The girl (as previously discussed, they could be any gender but, for the purposes of this story, they are a girl) asks her question and I stand completely silent, mouth slightly agape, for three seconds going on three decades. Then the conflicting reactions cancel each other out and I manage to pull out a response.

“No, thank you,” I say.

Then I smile, apologising with my eyes for being an old, confused fool, and then I plough on with my order.

And that’s it. That’s all.

Except sometimes I do actually want a drink with it.

But that’s a story for another day.

The Nice Lady with her Dog

I met my neighbour, the 50% man, on my way home from work the other day. If you wonder why I call him that, you can read about it by clicking here.

I was walking up along the street before mine and he was driving his white van. He stopped to talk to me and rolled down his window, but he didn’t pull in very far so the subsequent few minutes were spent trying to wave cars past him in both directions.

After a few impatient glares from passing drivers, I suggested he might pull in a little more and so he did and then we got to talking.

It turned out that he was quite upset. As a man who clearly values neighbourly contact and community interaction, he was distressed to find that one of our neighbours had very recently died and he had not learned of it until several days after the event when, as is the normal course of Irish bereavement, the funeral proceedings were all over and done with.

I asked who the lady was and he told me it was the nice lady with her dog, which she walks all the time. For my sins, I couldn’t place who he was talking about. This is very much a part of my make-up, my continuing and gradually increasing inability to make connections in my head between people and the places they inhabit.

He tried again to tell me who the recently deceased lady was but he used the common device of naming her neighbours and, in this attempt, he may as well have been using the Periodic Table of Elements to let me know who she was. We parted, both sad at the event we hadn’t been aware of, with me still painfully unaware of who I was sad about.

Two days later, I was walking up the same street and, sitting outside her house in the sun, was Donna. She was sitting on the low wall and grooming her lovely sheep dog with a textured glove. The dog got up from her grooming session and came over to me for her customary pet on her head. This is a long-held tradition we have, as I believe this to be the nicest dog in the entire neighbourhood. She is gentle and has a benign and pleasant disposition. I was a little touched that she would give up on a perfectly good groom just to enjoy a head-rub from me so I obliged gladly.

“She’s a bit out of sorts,” Donna said.

“Really?” I asked, “Why’s that?”

“She’s missing her Mum,” Donna replied and then she started to cry gently.

“She died,” she said.

I stopped rubbing the sad dog’s head.

“Your Mum? She died?”

Donna nodded. A few days before, quite suddenly. I gave her a hug. I couldn’t believe it. The nice lady with her dog had died and I didn’t even know it. And, possibly worse, The 50% Man had told me all about it and I couldn’t even guess who he was talking about.

And the funny thing was, it wasn’t because I hardly knew her that I couldn't guess who she was. Quite the opposite. It was because I knew her so very much better than that. My mind couldn't compute that if might be her who was gone. We spoke most days. The lovely dog was our common theme but the weather often featured too. She was lovely and her dog was lovely and I wished I’d known that she had passed away, so that I could have paid my respects, and I also wished that I had thought of her when I learned that somebody nice with a dog had died.

I looked her up on the website that records deaths in Ireland. She was originally from Peterborough in the UK. The condolence notes told me she was a keen darts player in the local pub and her team mates clearly thought very highly of her.

Her name was Sheila Dean.

I never knew her name, but I thought she was lovely and I’m very, very sad that she’s gone.

As we often say in Ireland around these times:

May her soul, and the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.

K x