And...THE GOOD NEWS IS...

        Being a senior citizen is a lot of fun, isn't it? OY!.( But there is good news...)


                                           AND THE GOOD NEWS IS...

Oh, boy! Such excitement! It's July and we Senior residents were being taken to the pool. It was the first time for me here. Most of us have brought our bathing suits with us when moved in, (or should I say our daughters packed them for us).
When I was putting mine on I didn't know what to expect. It was a year since I had worn it. I looked in the mirror..fine...the top of me was okay...the middle of me was okay...the bottom of me was not! My legs were lumpy and bumpy, and had blue lines all over them looking like a map of the Seven Seas and their tributaries. I sat at the pool with my robe on and thought...well, this will be my summer, get used to it! Then groups of the other residents came into the pool area.
And the good news was they didn't look any better than I did. I took off my robe and went into the
pool.
                                                        MORE GOOD NEWS

The question is; Do we seniors lose our things more often than younger folk?
When you see one of us searching through her pocket book and her shopping bag,with a panicky look on her face sometimes even emptying them onto the table or even on the couch  and muttering something that sound like prayers one minute and cusses the next .., you ask her, "What happened?"
"I lost my cell phone," she'll say,  OR my eyeglasses... my.credit card....my room key...." can even be a larger object such as her walker. So you'll see her stumbling around from room to room," Who saw my walker? "she announces ( angry ...but at who?)
The good news is  she didn't  LOSE them, they are NOT LOST.  They are still there, exactly where she left them.

                                                      AND YET MORE

Most of us seniors get our medication at breakfast. We're given about  8 to 10 pills, small medium, white, blue, yellow, red, etc.Some are round, some oblong, capsules of lilac, or orange and that's just in the morning. At dinner time we get more. I take mine one at a time...one by one...by one. My new friend Marsha throws several in her mouth at once. I was  horrified! "Marsha, NO! Don't do that."   But she smiled in her calm way (did one of those pills made her calm?)
 "You can take as many as you can swallow at one time, "she said, "because the good news is they all know where to go.  They have a road map...like we did when we were still driving... on a trip across the country." She smiled at her memory of it. I smiled back, in pretense. That little pill has what I never had...a good sense of direction, Road map or no road map , what I needed was another human being seated next to me telling me exactly what turns to take, what stops to make...for Goodness Sake! ( She's a poet and she don't know it.) But if that orange capsule and the pink pill etc. all go straight to where they should go, I am inspired to go on another trip again...if well... If someone else
were driving.


                                                                 AND MORE

Sometimes, one of us seniors may forget a name or a word. When we live in a senior home with possibly 100 other residents we can't remember everybody's name, can we?? How about 50% of the names. Still too many? The staff all wear name tags,( good idea...better than calling them..."Hey You"  some have suggested that residents wear name tag also,but many are opposed to it. Why? Are some hiding their past? Wouldn't that be fun for the rest of us who have mundane life stories.
Words are equally tough, they may just escape us momentarily. But there is good news.For instance one of our residents was looking for her walker after dinner.but couldn't recall the word. She stuttered and called it by other names..my cart..my wagon.. my carriage..my chair...my Caddy (as in Cadillac).
But the good news is the one that I use if I can't bring the right word to mind and can be used for any and everything from soup to nuts to walkers.The word is "thing" as in 'I need my 'thing'. Have you seen my 'thing'? The staff usually gets what we mean and it certainly is easier for us.
Try it some time.
                                                        THE END