Resolve to Find “Wow” Experiences for the New Year
Often at the end of the year I reflect in my columns on a New Years’ Eve experience I shared with my mother which was the last one we knew together. Even in a nursing home we were able to recognize and celebrate the coming of the New Year in our own way.
Recent events caused me to remember my last Christmas with my mother which was at the end of that year, 1998, also at a nursing home. The impressions of the two meetings were similar but that Christmas is the basis I have for talking about holding on to the “wow” experiences in life.
After a certain date or a certain age, so goes the common wisdom, either because of physical or mental infirmities, we no longer are capable of enjoying or appreciating life. Along with this view comes the notion that, at a certain point, whatever that age might be, we peak, and that life is all down hill from there.
With such negative views of aging, it is not surprising that we do everything in our power to avoid the idea that time is passing by. We might try cosmetics or even surgery. On the other hand, even in our speech and our actions, we sometimes unnecessarily use age as an excuse instead of saying what we really mean.
We might say “I’m too old to do that any more,” when what we really mean is “I used to do that. I did not enjoy it and now I am deciding not to do it any more.” Age might not have anything to do with it.
When my daughter was still a toddler, a friend said to me “If only we had their energy.” I told her. “We have their energy. It is their enthusiasm that is lacking.” Then I pointed out to her that children are sprinters. As we get older, we become the long distance runners. A young child will play intensely for hours but then collapse at nap time. We older people will stay up late into the night to care for our children or grandchildren and forget that we are tired because of lack of sleep.
Enthusiasm often restores energy. When we are immersed in a project that interests us, we often forget everything else and discover the resources to go on.
All of this leads to my last Christmas with my mother. On December 25, 1998, I drove to the Delaware County nursing home where my mother was staying with a special gift. There were few things that excited my mother at that point. Her dementia that was diagnosed as having resulted from mini-strokes made it difficult for us to communicate with her or for her to comprehend what was going on around her. I watched her walk down the hall with a walker, an aid walking close beside her.
There were a few matters that still seemed to interest my mother from time to time in the last few years. One of them was politics. She still would listen to election returns. The other was the knowledge that she understood generally that her oldest daughter was adopting a little girl from China.
When Mom reached her room that day, I drew a chair close beside her and introduced her to a 22 month old little girl, my daughter, who had just come from China with me a few days before. “Mom. This is my daughter, Alisa, the little girl I told you about.” My mother knew then that her daughter, the last one in the family without children, now was a mother also.
Mom reached across from her bed and took my daughter’s hand in both of her own. She said one word that she repeated over and over again “Wow!”
For families with members who are seriously ill or who have dementia or Alzheimer’s, it may not seem that there are many “Wow” experiences left but, even at those difficult times, sometimes they do come. I have a client who would visit his wife in a nursing home and report “She smiled today” with the same pride and intensity as if he won the World Series and rightly so.
For us and my daughter, I tell her that her grandmother met her once and the word that she repeated over and over again was “Wow!”
I wish all of my readers, listeners, and clients, whatever their time in life may be, many good “Wow!” experiences in 2013.
(This is a repeat of a column published December 28, 2010. Janet Colliton is on vacation.)
For more, listen to “50+ Planning Ahead” a weekly radio program on WCHE 1520 on every Wednesday from 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm with Janet Colliton, Colliton Law Assocs., PC, and Phil McFadden of Home Instead Senior Care.
About the Author Janet Colliton
Esquire, Colliton Law Associates, P.C. Janet Colliton has practiced law for over 38 years, 37 of them in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her practice, Colliton Law Associates, PC, is limited to elder law, Medicaid, including advice, applications and appeals, and other benefits planning including Veterans benefits, life care and special needs planning, guardianships, retirement, and estate planning and administration.