Читать книгу Making The Right Move - Gillian Eades Telford - Страница 13

The following story illustrates the effect of a positive mind on a positive life. By maintaining balance in all areas of her life, Mrs. Stein manages to exemplify successful aging. In fact, gerontologists ought to be studying people like her to examine how she was able to survive so well.

Aging Successfully: Mrs. Stein’s Story

The sun shone on Mrs. Stein, making her silver hair sparkle as she sat on a bench under a tree outside her apartment. Her son had arranged a party for her 90th birthday, and the garden was filled with chatting groups of people, from high school girls, young married couples, and middle-aged matrons to dowagers and people her own age, all somehow connected to Mrs. Stein through her many varied activities.

Mrs. Stein was holding court, vivaciously telling stories. She introduced the man sitting next to her as her “latest squeeze,” telling the story of how they had met and fallen in love. “He came to one of my lectures on Emily Brontë, and I went to one of his lectures about astronomy, and that was that.” She had been divorced 35 years previously and had had no man in her life until now. She was an intellectual and a scholar on Emily Brontë and now she lectured at the senior’s university alumni center.

Although Mrs. Stein had physical problems, she made light of them. She had arthritis in her knees, which made walking difficult. She had trouble seeing and needed very strong light and a strong magnifying glass to read. It was slow going, but she persisted and talked to her friends about what she had read. She even did needlepoint under the same circumstances, although the stitching was no longer as minuscule as it had been in her earlier work. Also, Mrs. Stein was getting deaf and had trouble hearing her classical music unless she turned it up quite high. By so doing, the deafness did not bother her. She could still hear people talking to her as long as background noise was minimal.

Mrs. Stein had always been active in the affairs of her cooperative housing project and was responsible for drawing up the bylaws that governed their living. Her apartment co-op was an early government project with rent geared to income, so this helped to keep her financially independent and enabled her to pursue her many interests.

Mrs. Stein was known to the continuing care division of her regional health board and had a homemaker once a month to clean her apartment. She cooked for herself, and a neighbor got her groceries because she had stopped driving a couple of years ago.

Her only son lived out of town but came to visit every couple of months. She phoned him occasionally to keep in touch. Her family included her vast number of friends in the apartment townhouse complex, and she was always meeting new people and making new friends. She had a vast knowledge about many subjects, was terribly opinionated, but had a rare sense of humor and a delight in living that enchanted everyone.

She was interested and contributed to her community. She was responsible for establishing a group in a senior center that advocated for elder rights. Over the years, when she took an interest in anything, she devoted her great mind to seek solutions and solve problems. She was an activist, and some of her early efforts had flourished into growing organizations in which she was still involved in their daily affairs.