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Since my sixties I have discovered a world that I didn’t know existed!
Sure you hear about doctors, pills, aches and pains and you are told
this and that to live a few more years. You even hear about old men and
women having sex and you go “UGH!” You hear both bad and good things
about aging but there is one topic that is very seldom talked about and
that is having family and friends dying as you get older.
Granted
I live in a senior citizen residential community where most everyone is
62 years and older, some in their 90s, so the expectation is always
around. When you don’t see someone for a few days your immediate thought
is “Are they okay?” and then “Are they alive?”
I went through a
lot of deaths 30 years ago when AIDS hit and I had crossed out more
addresses in my phone book than I had the first 60 years of my life. I
have dealt with the death of teenagers who acquired AIDS and whose
parents didn’t care.
In the last decade I lost six friends and
an ex-lover who all influenced my life. They ranged in age from the
early 40s to the early 80s, None of their deaths have been easy. It
seems that a month doesn’t go by that I don’t lose at least one person
in my life.
I stopped going to funerals and wakes the day my aunt
Flo died. She was more of a mother to me then my own mother. She was
the first person who gave me unconditional love and now, 31 years later,
I still feel that.
Dying is a part of getting old and it effects old people in many different ways aside from making them realize their mortality.
In
the slideshow are just a few people I have lost in the last few years.
I could give you their names and tell you about them but it wouldn’t
mean anything to you. They all meant something to me and will always be
remembered with a smile from me because just thinking of them makes me
happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI8mfiNK6ak&feature=youtu.be
