Elderly Women and the Finer Things in Life

Elderly women. They're all around. Over the last few weeks, I have been spending time with a few of them. One, who was helping me put together a book for a client. Another, who had come down from abroad to visit her family back home. These are friends I met over the years through church and work.

I value and cherish the nuggets of wisdom they lavish on me as they share their stories and reflections on life. Neither have had lives that would have sent them jet-setting around the globe, craving for the finer things in life, nor splurging their mounds of riches on spending impulses. One, recently lost her husband. The other had lost her son years ago to death through a devastating fall. She now works with disabled children.

Their simple and decent living makes you recount the simple pleasures and joys in your life - having enough to eat and survive daily, realising that time is scarce and it is good to live intentionally and wisely, and above all, helping me appreciate my mom.

This morning I realised that the one lady who deserves my thoughts and attention is my mom. I haven't been spending enough time with her. I am learning to despise overwork and busyness because it robs me from the people who matter most. I have a girlfriend who works crazy hours (to my chagrin at times), and I am now acquainted with how my mom feels about my work habits.

My mom, weathered by her stroke in 2006, has an indomitable spirit to care for us (brothers) and our dogs at home. She does the housework despite her disability. She walks with a limp and walking stick (when we go out). Her failing eyesight doesn't impede her from seeing that our needs are met - she washes our clothes, even when we tell her not to. She hardly wears fancy dresses. Hardly desires getting her hair done. Hardly ever excited about having elaborate and flashy dinners - she likes it simple and cheap.

Deep inside, I cringe when I hear elderly women talking fastidiously about how they must have their massage or manicure or do their hair or have a holiday -- as if without them, one can never function adequately --because those are the things I would want my mom to have and enjoy. But my mom sees them as mere luxuries - wants, and not needs. I cringe mainly at my inadequacies to provide these additional things for her wellbeing. But as I cut deeper to the core, it is my time with her that I know she cherishes and misses. I think the next elderly woman I spend time with ought to be my mom.

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