Fun Place for Older People
Eleanor, an older person
Fun Place is in Eilat where older people go to get away from their children who want them to babysit. There they can hide among the tourists and live the life they never could when they were younger and were busy raising children and building a career.
Fun place is a big tall building with 12 stories and 10 apartments on each floor so that there are 120 apartments, 6 big meeting rooms for courses and games and lectures, an auditorium, a huge garden, a gym and a swimming pool. There is a huge kitchen with a big dining area and also a cafe with coffee, company, people to talk to, sandwiches and cookies all day long.
There is a social activities director who is in charge of bringing interesting lectures and activities. It is fun and keeps people active and interested. It reminds me of a big happy kindergarten, where people are trying to forget that time is progressing and they are trying to ignore how their bodies are getting older and failing them to a certain extent. Some manage to ignore this reality; others accept it and live with it, while a third group constantly fights it and is busy with hours of gym and swimming and walking in the water exercises.
Then there is a fourth group that is depressed, thinking of death and deterioration and always have horrible reports of Peter G. who had a stroke and Frieda who had a heart attack and now is in the hospital. Some of this group are so depressed and angry that they have to let out their anger by constantly complaining about something: the food, the service, the nurse, the secretary, the cost, the cleaning lady, the director of the facility or anybody else they can get into their mouths.
They are so good at this criticism that if they complain long and hard enough, they get their children to complain too and to write letters and emails and what's apps to the children of other residents so that their complaints can make other people feel bad too.
The truth is that these children are actually so afraid that their elderly parents are going to die and they are so upset when they see them deteriorating and losing some of their physical and mental skills, that these middle aged children who are also responsible for children and grandchildren, are simply overwhelmed and looking for a scapegoat for the unfairness of nature and death.
In spite of the underlying knowledge that there will be an end at some time, most residents, caregivers, children and workers are happy, joyful, and live in the present. They are a microcosm of the real world outside on the one hand, but on the other hand they are free of the necessity of running to work every day and managing a household, children, jobs and other necessary commitments.
As a result we have a large group of happy, fun loving individuals who are enjoying the safety and comfort of living in our community. They value what they have and what they do, and are not part of the nasty complaining letter writing group. They have found the secret of living in the present moment and are mostly inclined to BE and are more reflective than their children and the younger generations who are more into Doing. But, even so, there are those among us who have not got rid of the DOING urge and are still at it.
A good example of this is Sara, who is almost completely blind, but still gets around with her walker, without a Philippine caregiver, and is busy writing poetry. She writes beautiful poems about everything she hears and feels, every holiday, every occasion, every event in our building.
She is an example for us all. She has good connections with family, friends, other residents and workers. We all can learn from her how to accept the inevitable and enjoy what there is. We could all learn the lesson to observe what is left and what we have, and to focus with gratitude while experiencing with curiosity, kindness and compassion.
This helps us to relate to ourselves and to our limitations in a different way, while still validating that it is hard. Sara is not ignoring; she is accepting and can at 89 still be a teacher for us all. It is not surprising that she has so many friends.
Some people might call this a retirement building for older people,
but me and my friends like to call it a FUN PLACE, or even more true THE FUN PLACE.
We all believe we are not old enough and not decrepit enough to live in a retirement home, or Parent's Home or anything like that.
We do not even believe that we belong in a RETIREMENT COMMUNITY. NO. We belong in a fun place. It took us many months and even years of adjustment and thinking it over to even agree to move into such a community with all those old people. Not for us. We are young at heart and young in spirit and definitely do not belong in a house full of old people.
That is why we live in THE FUN PLACE and it can be situated ONLY in Eilat which is a fun place with tourists and new people every day.
Moreover there is the question of being a USELESS old lady or of being a USEFUL old lady. OLD we have no control over, but being useful or useless we DO have control over, and so we have decided we want fun AND TO BE Useful. This does not include only being babysitters, but also could include it, but much more. We study esperanto, learn new subjects, have lectures every day, go to the gym, go to the swimming pool, make jewelry, learn other languages, go on trips, travel abroad when there is no coronavirus, go to concerts, sing, dance, play bridge and rummy cube and trivia, some of us cook, do good deeds for others, visit the sick, help our friends, translate books and interviews and many many more things. And all this is while we are trying to adjust to the fact that this old person that looks back at us in the mirror is really US.
But this is not the US that WE know. We know a person that is thinner, less wrinkles, straighter, stronger and who looks much younger.
NO. We are not old enough to look like that, and definitely not old enough to live in a building or community with all these old people, some of whom forget what day it is. We might have a number in our ID card or passport or birth certificate that says we are as old as they are, but we certainly look younger and definitely act younger and feel younger. How young we are is in our mind. So we tell ourselves we are younger and useful, and so we are.
We all have many parts in our psyche, or many different voices telling us different things at different times. Sometimes we have a PARENT part which we learnt at a very early age telling us what is right and what is wrong and what is good to do and what is bad to do. We also have an ADULT part which is our reality check and keeps us in balance, in equilibrium and is our adult voice, logical, rational and functional. Then we have a CHILD part, WHICH IS FUN and just loves living in THE FUN PLACE, where we can go swimming every day, play and just have fun. Some of us also work part time and not every day. Our job in life is to have fun.
But then, there are those of us that think about life, how long and how short it is and the idea that it will end and the end is closer than farther away. And then they get sad, some might even say depressed. It is our job, the fun lovers and the happy, to point out to them that it is good to focus on what we have and not on what we do not have, that life is full of good things and nobody knows how long he is going to live. If we have children or did something worthwhile in our lives, we will not be forgotten and erased as long as somebody remembers us or our deeds.All we have to do to get out of this sad mood is to think and focus on good deeds, good people, our family, our children, good music, good books, good movies and anything else that makes us feel good.
There are some of us that philosophize that the universe, or God, gave us our spirit or our soul for only a short time and that we have to give it back sometime. They keep hoping it is later than sooner. Then there is the question, "How many souls does this God have?" "Where do they go after us?" Nobody likes the idea that he will cease to exist. Then there is the question, "How will they get along without me?" The "they" could be children, parents, sisters, brothers, friends, husbands, wives etc. Everybody who has lived a while and loved and been loved, is missed, and is irreplaceable.
A positive idea is that we pass on to our children and grandchildren
our genes and our education and ideas.
This is our Bridge Between the Generations.
When I watch my daughter Dena with her children I Keep
thinking of my mother as she was when I was a child, and of
myself as a mother when Dena was a child. It is like a bridge
between the generations. The way she talks to her children I
see myself talking to my children. And in the background I
hear my mother echoing and probably her mother too.
The way she smiles at her children, I see my mother
smiling at me, and remember the warmth in my heart when I
smiled at them and they smiled at me. When I see her
children hug her I remember how my heart swelled up when
she and Jonathan hugged me. And today I am overcome with
joy when her children hug me and I see my mother in the
background. The way my mother thought, I now find myself
thinking, and I hear the echoes in Dena's words.
The bridges between the generations are made of
thoughts, words and hugs, and the glue is love. This bridge of
immortality goes from generation to generation and now
has another extension to Ruteleh, my grand-daughter.
And will go on being built to her daughter.
This is an article about life and relationships and how to enjoy life, enjoy people and examples of what happens when people are older, live together in the same building, have common present experiences and very different past experiences and different personalities. People are fascinating and looking at people living in a retirement home is kind of like going to a zoo and looking at the animals, unless you live in one and then it is a different experience. I am trying here to give you a sense of that experience and the people around who have become in a certain way, kind of an extended family. As senior citizens who feel that they are no longer working and no longer contributing to society, they are afraid that their worth has decreased. Many of them do not feel valuable anymore.
Their building is not a retirement home; it is a retirement community, each individual being part of a whole that has its own personality and characteristics. The retirement community has many benefits and some pitfalls.
There are many topics here, that different individuals talked about after choosing pictures from KEG cards. Each issue and topic was presented by a personality or several personalities; for instance, the hoarder, who desperately needs help to declutter. She has clothes from 40 years ago which she does not wear but cannot get herself to get rid of. Another hoarder has an apartment full of books; she is drowning in books and papers; another hoarder has medicines that she has left over from many illnesses ago and she is afraid she will need them one day and so she cannot just throw them away. Our hoarders all have one quality in common. They are afraid. Fear and anxiety flood their unconscious and they have a basic statement in their unconscious that rules their lives, "There is not enough". They are all afraid that they will not have enough of something. What unites them all is the fear that they do not have enough time; time to do all the things that they wanted to do in their lives; time to see all the places and fix all the relationships and just to live life to the fullest.
Then we have a group of the hypochondriacs who are constantly worried that they have all the possible illnesses and that they are going to die,
today, not tomorrow or next week, or next month, or in a year or in 10 years. They are deathly afraid that their end is now. We have a group of "givers" and a group of "takers." The givers are giving to the collective "everybody" in many different ways and the takers are taking in many different ways. The takers are acting out of a feeling of emptiness; they have a huge hole inside them that they have to fill up and so are taking from others whatever they can: attention, time, food, objects, and even a plastic foot that is used as door stopper in the computer room and suddenly disappeared. The givers have many different tasks, some official and some they invent. It is their way for making up for what they are losing with age and time. They are making up for their losing health, strength, ability to function one hundred percent and with very little time, quickly and with little effort. The givers collect plastic containers to recycle and this is their way for saving the planet for the next generation. The givers are in the various committees for the good of the house/building. They work in the library, teach computer skills or smart phone skills. They sew masks out of material to give out to their friends during the Corona Virus turbulent times. They try to help and do for others even when the others want their independence and challenges and do not ask for help, trying to do things themselves. There are those that think they are better, more intelligent, more successful, more talented, look better, are richer, or more important than others; then there are those that really are better than others but do not know this. These individuals feel that maybe they did something wrong, are not as good as they could be, are not really successful or intelligent or good-looking or talented. There is the woman who always talks about her dead husband and the talks she has with him every morning. The list of personalities is never-ending and this book only describes some of them, the ones we are living with and see every day, except for the days that some are hiding away in their apartments afraid of getting the Corona virus.
There are those that throw caution to the wind and go to shopping malls, family meetings, restaurants and even weddings; and there are those that are afraid to ride on the elevator with you. There are daredevils and frightened loners who retreat from any social contacts that might infect them with the virus.
This retirement building is full of intrigues, power grabs as seen in the voting for the different committees. One-upmanship is often seen in various contexts as is backstabbing on the one hand, and then there is selfless giving and caring for others on the other hand. Just like our country is our country, for good and for bad, our extended family, our living community is ours. The residents here are part of our extended family if they suffer from many insecurities and if they suffer from over-confidence. Some suffer from physical constraints, others from mental constraints and others from financial constraints, or maybe they are just counting their coins out of a psychological limiting belief and not out of a real financial necessity.
An example of a picture often chosen is Scardie cat. It was chosen by several residents that reported that he symbolized how they feel, especially in these turbulent frightening and challenging days. People that chose pictures and talked about them, reported feeling much better, stronger and better able to cope with the emotional difficulties of this stage in their lives. After choosing and describing the frightened Scardie cat and answering questions about his thoughts, feelings and activities and making up narratives, almost everybody chose the picture of the happy Scardie cat who has adapted to his new reality. If you change the way you think about reality, your feelings change, and then as if magic, the reality changes.