By Victoria Koch
I come home from a walk and there is a man with his bike loaded with all his possessions, sleeping on the sidewalk. Earlier after my yoga class, having forgotten to check my cell phone messages, I discovered a person I know has suddenly died. Scanning the headlines on the New York Times digital page doesn’t lift my spirit. If we don’t wake up, we Americans might lose our democracy!
How do we keep our heads above water? In November 2023, during the ongoing Russia/Ukraine War, the Israel/Gaza War and after another mass shooting in Maine, I wrote a Local and Vocal column about finding hope amidst all this turmoil. Now what?
How about finding inspiration from the aging, our dear elder citizens.
I am in my 70s, but I know several women in their 80s who are meeting their age challenges. A neighbor around the corner has discovered she has Crohn’s disease. She doesn’t go on long walks any more. Her small studio home has become her center. A commercial artist in her youth, she now sets up her painting space and paints almost daily.
What really surprised me, though, is the garden she has created around her apartment building. In front is a strawberry patch, by the side she has made a trellis out of branches for her beans and, in the back, she helps her daughter with her small garden. I visit this neighbor often because she inspires me. She is doing what she can with the life she has been given.
Another nearly 90-year-old friend can’t drive anymore, and her body is bent over a walker whenever she goes anywhere. She just finished rereading Les Misérables and shows me her brain is not handicapped. Though it is difficult for her, she still bakes brilliant cakes as she used to own a bakery. And she tackles airports and makes it on and off airplanes when she travels.
Perhaps one of the most inspiring elders I have met is a neighbor who has been homeless and now lives in a ShelterCare Conestoga hut.
Even though her body can be riddled with arthritic pain, she bikes, helps out bi-monthly with free food distribution through the Unitarian Church and, with others, started her own nonprofit for creating and distributing health kits to the homeless.
This election season my elder friends are once again writing hundreds of postcards to encourage people to vote in this most pivotal election. What these older neighbors and friends are showing me is we each have to do what we are able to do to fix our falling apart world.
What can you do?