NOT in the slow lane, YET

The blog is about living life after 70 with joy, resilience, and purpose. NOT in the slow lane, YET is a source of positive, helpful advice encouraging people to set and achieve goals and find joy in life. The blog will cover personal experiences and thoughts and concerns. Topics of blogs will be health, retirement, fashion, travel, and living in continuing care retirement communities. The blogs will be short and appear at least once a month on my website www.nadineblock.com or by email if you choose. Come walk with me.

Is loneliness an inevitable part of aging?

What if all my friends and family die before I do?

What will I do if I open my address book and see that the names of my friends and family have been crossed out?  All of them.   What would I do if I were alone? I recently looked at my address book and saw many crossed-out names. My memory goes back to my grandfather, who lived in his mid-nineties with no friends. 

  “He was lonely,” she said.  “ I took him to visit Tony, his last friend. Now, Tony is gone.  All he has is his newspapers and his pipe.”  

Mom was talking about Grandpa George, her father, who lived with us on our Wisconsin dairy farm and died in his mid-nineties.  I remember him sitting in his chair, a six-foot-tall, thin, white-haired old man.  Staring into the distance,  circles of rising smoke from the pipe in his hand.  Few people lived to be that old in the 1960’s.  It must have been very lonely for him.  

Those of us living into our eighties, nineties, and older may find we are without old friends and family. This can be a profoundly isolating experience. 

Like my grandfather,  I treasure friendships.  Old friends restore memories that are fading or long lost.  I am lucky to have a handful of friendships up to fifty, sixty, or even seventy years. They are people who understand me, my youthful struggles, and my triumphs. Some friends have died, and some are not well.  Some have faded away.  Holiday cards come back with no forwarding addresses. I search obituaries, looking for them.  I wish I could find them. 

I resolve to be mindful of nurturing current friendships and making new ones, even if I am 90 or older. My mom lived to 101.

Sharing memories helps me find meaning in my life.

My first significant friends outside the family were my high school friends Fern, Sandy, and Barb.  We were in the dance club and band, sometimes acting in the same plays, and often, arm and arm, we strolled around the school, sometimes dressing in the same color sweaters or some other sign of camaraderie.  Sandy and Barb lived in Medford, so Fern and I, farm girls,  sometimes stayed with them for after-school events.   We went to different colleges, married, and stayed connected with holiday cards and an occasional get-together like a class reunion.  Sandy’s cards from Minnesota ended five or so years ago.  Two years ago, our cards to Barb returned with no forwarding address. Fern and I corresponded sparingly for many years but easily connected a few years ago through telephone and email.  Now, we try to connect more often.

We know our time for friendship is short.

I plan to nurture my present relationships and seek new ones. 

I can now spend time on friendships. I didn’t have much time to do that when raising a family and working. My friends were family, neighbors, and work friends.

I try to connect with old friends through newspaper articles about our old town or a memory of them they might have forgotten.   I plan to focus on being a good friend—the kind of friend I want to have.   I will share and ask for help.  What happened to someone we knew?  Do they have the contact information of the person?  I see that their Facebook account seems to have been hacked.  I let them know.

I wrote a memoir that brought back old connections.  Gannet Newspapers reviewed Remembering Rosie: Memories of a Wisconsin Farm Girl. Among the people who read the review was my first love. He was the first boy I kissed.  I discovered I was the first girl he kissed.  He was the most handsome boy I had ever seen.  Both of our spouses died, and we were free to share memories and create a warm relationship.  We feel happy to have one another as friends, even though we are distant and planted where we are.  He brings back memories of my teenage years.   He vehemently disagreed with my self-description of being a frail 89-pound 14-year-old.  He took me skiing.  He said I  bravely took off down the mountain. He thought  I would kill myself.   He helped me swim out to a  floating pier in the lake  when my only swim lesson was my dad tossing me in waist-deep lake water, shouting,  “Swim, swim!” 

I changed the tapes that had played in my head for seven decades. I created a new narrative of my young self as strong and brave.

Call an old friend from high school.

Do you still have a crush on your high school boyfriend or girlfriend? Someone can help you find the person. You may be rejected, but what do you have to lose?

Think of your high school classmates.  Who would you like to reconnect with? Connect because you genuinely want to know this person.  They won’t be the youth you knew in high school, but you may share memories that will inform, amaze, and entertain you.  Engage the person in talking about himself—where he lives, his health, whether he is in contact with other people from your high school, and whether he would like to stay connected.  How will you stay connected?  By telephone, email, or texting?  Share a memory or two of a recent meeting with an old friend from high school, but mostly have the person talk about himself. Most of us warm up to that kind of dialogue.  

Nurture current friendships.

Focus on being a good friend—the kind of friend we want to have—someone who listens, cares, supports, is sincere,  and makes little acts of kindness—a birthday card, an invitation to lunch, a book I  might like.  Make regular contact.  It is easy for friendships to fade away.  It is hard to rekindle friendships.

Stay active and engaged.

Actively try to meet new friends through clubs like book clubs, birding clubs, bridge clubs, and activities like poetry writing, walking groups, volunteering, and charities.  What do you enjoy?  Find a group that enjoys it. You are likely to find a friend among the people in the group.

Remember loved ones who are no longer here.

Our friends and family members may die before we do.  Whether they’ve moved or passed away, take time to think about them and acknowledge your loss.  When I walk in the morning, I look into the sky, and  I say, “Good morning” and “I love you”  to my two beloved sons, who died of cancer in the last four years.   I  begin the day with a loving memory. 

Connection with others is vital to alleviating feelings of isolation and sadness. 

My mom had no old friends in her later years, but she was good at making friends with younger people.  I asked the director of her assisted living residence if she was, at 100, the oldest person there.  She said, “Your mother is younger than many of our eighty-year-olds.”  I hope people say that about me.

Tell your friends you are so happy to have them in your life.  Tell them why.  You may not have another opportunity.