Growing up and growing old
Photo by PICNIC-Foto-Soest (Pixbay)
In the recent past, I started volunteering at a retirement home since I wanted to prove to myself that I am a better person than the troublemaker I constantly paint myself to be. Besides that, I was bored and could not think of any better way to spend my time.
A while back, I wrote two articles about volunteering and how I started this volunteering journey. In the previous articles, I also mentioned a few reasons people volunteer and how to start volunteering if one is interested. (Links below)
Volunteering - Why it confuses me
This article however is much less about how to start and the reasons for starting and more about what I came to realize. Frankly, I believe I already wrote enough about volunteering so this time around I want to write about something I realized when volunteering.
As mentioned above I started volunteering at a retirement residence near my dorm since they were looking for volunteers and I happened to see one of their ads. Much to my surprise, it is very different from what I expected retirement homes to be.
For starters, the resident´s ages vary a lot. In full honesty, I cannot and will not disclose any personal information about the residents living in that facility but they are old and I don’t mean it as an insult. They just are.
Each resident varies a lot from one another a lot as well. Some are fairly healthy even though they are close to their hundredth birthday. For some others the toll time had on them is quite obvious even though they are barely in their nineties.
What each residence needs is also vastly different. Some may be needing walking support. Some others may need a hearing aid or constant medical attention. Some are suffering from dementia and some others are just there because their family can´t care for them anymore.
Those are just some of the information I have heard in the short amount of time I spent there. Full disclosure, those are rather frequent information one gets to hear about the residents. To be perfectly honest, I believe that those details are rather frequent amongst elderlies in general.
Another thing I noticed is how movies and advertisement posters paint a slightly different picture than reality. In movies and TV shows tend to overlook a few aspects of living or working in a retirement home (as shows normally do) but I will get more into that reality shock later.
Nevertheless, I don’t want to spend time writing about the residence themselves but would rather like to spend time writing about what I do at a senior residence and what the seniors (in life not in high school) have told me during my time there.
What helped me is to always walk into the retirement home with a smile on my face and a willingness to help. It is not going to help the residents nor oneself if one doesn’t want to be there and want to play grumpy cat for the whole day.
The reason for the positive attitude is simple. Many residents living in the senior citizen´s home don’t want to be there for various reasons. Normally when people are in places they don’t want to be they tend to not have a positive attitude about it. The same goes for the elderly who don’t have anywhere else to go.
Being positive in a retirement home is helpful for the residents and can put a smile on their faces even for a short moment in time. One has to understand that living in that retirement home is their life now and variety is not common so every little bit of care and excitement can brighten their day. (Now I just realize how condescending that sounds and it only gets worse from here so I apologize in advance.)
What astonished me is how simple the life of elderlies are in general. Before I started volunteering at the retirement home, I asked my grandparents what they do all day and their answers were so simple and so routine. Their idea of fun is far less exciting than what I consider to be fun.
Therefore, it was mildly put quite an adjustment when I started helping out in a senior citizen´s home. I was prepared to be more patient and more observant but I was just not prepared to do so simple tasks like listening or telling a story more regularly than something active like walking or playing games.
Frankly, I knew that I could not train for the marathon with elderlies (and I would never want to train for the marathon to be fair). What I did not know was that the range of activities one can do as a volunteer in a retirement home is that limited.
Humdrum aside, I actually enjoyed my time as a volunteer there and I would probably go back more often in the future if the university does not wear me out beforehand. Even the volunteering advisor at the senior´s home even specify that I could come any time and should not go if I have too much work.
Candidly, I appreciate a decent conversation with the right company. Some part of me even cherishes listening to other life stories since it puts my life into perspective for me. If it is just me and my life story, I will put myself under so much pressure but listening to other stories, I realize that I should take it slow and just enjoy the journey more.
Anyhow, listening to the senior´s stories is not all sunshine and rainbows. They are advanced in age and they have experienced a thing or two that might have not been too pleasant. Regret may also be sprinkled into their conversations, which is heartbreaking, to say the least.
Even though I leave the retirement home at the end of the day with a warm fuzzy feeling in me since I had done something good that day. Nonetheless, I am guaranteed to leave it with a feeling of melancholy as well even though the warm feeling is certainly stronger than the melancholy one.
The main reason for my melancholy is quite obvious. The sob stories the residents tell. However, the other reason why the melancholy persists is because the concept of a retirement home is just tragic to me in general.
In my twisted mind, I always considered senior citizens´ homes and retirement generally just as a period in, which one is waiting to pass. With each passing day, the body is getting weaker, the hearing is getting worse and the mind is slowing down. There is not much one can do in old age even though curiosity is still present. That must be torture.
That in my opinion is sad and many seniors in that retirement home seem to be bluntly aware of that fact as well. Some are petrified by the idea of mortality and some others are just depressed by the weakening of what used to be a perfectly good body.
Some other residents, on the other hand, seem to take another approach to life. Rather than being constantly down in the dumps or in fear of the inevitable, they just came to terms with it and enjoy the time they have even though that time is spent away from their loved ones.
The sad part of the retirement home is that some of the most cheerful residents have the most tragic stories. Some want to be with their loved ones but they can´t take care of the elderly. Some others lost their loved ones ages ago. Some are slowly developing mental illnesses alongside the physical ones.
Nevertheless, they keep that positive attitude and that smile on their faces, which I find incredibly admirable. Since I can already imagine myself in that kind of situation and I know that I would not be that cheerful about it.
When I am helping in a nursing home or any facility providing for elderlies, I just can´t help but imagine myself in their shoes. Even with decades ahead of me, I am already starting to imagine being old and ending up in a nursing home.
Attempting to paint a picture of the future is, bluntly, a waste of time. One is not living in the moment anymore and setting oneself up for disappointment (since imagination is always nicer than real life). Besides, there is no way one can dream up an accurate future since there are so many variables at play.
However, I do find my mind drifting a bit when talking to seniors since they always spark that conversation. They talk about how they were young back in the day and their advice to younger generations while I think about me growing old and regretting past events.
I think about how I would grow up and lead a life similar to the one´s the seniors before me have led (with key differences obviously). I would imagine how I would grow old and stay at a nursing home in the future just as the seniors are.
How my muscles will start to weaken. How my hearing will falter. How my speech will be incoherent. How I will be suffering from mental health problems when that time comes. How I will face those problems, I would never have to face in my youth. How I will not exist one day.
That thought is just scary but imagining that helped me understand where the seniors are coming from. Being in a nursing home all alone with only impatient young nurses. I can imagine how it must feel to see a friendly face in those decorated yet gloomy halls.
Since I am barely an adult and still have a whole life ahead of me, I am going to stop right here before I spiral even further into the concept of death and existential crisis. However, if you would want to understand my thought process, I challenge you to do the same.
Besides the fresh new perspective I have gained on life, I also found a great way to pass my time. In my opinion, it is a win-win situation. The interaction with seniors in the nursing home has helped me open up more and be more confident.
At first, elderlies may seem intimidating (I can´t lie) because I feared that they would judge me for the modern way I dress or the technology I always carry with me. However, it turns out I could not be more wrong. The seniors don’t care as long as one´s behaviour is not too excessive.
Talking to the seniors mentally prepared me for the inevitable as well even though it is still years ahead of me and I don’t like to think about it. I also like to believe that I have kept the senior's company and helped them in one way or another even though I can´t tell if my beliefs are true or not.
This whole volunteering at a retirement home experience is just incredibly interesting to me since I get to understand how connections form between two generations that barely have anything in common (even though connections can´t form between anyone. It might take some time to warm up to them and vice versa.)
Many people are asking why I am volunteering at a senior citizen home in the first place and to that, I can only answer because I can. Rethinking the past and imagining the future, made me understand two things. The elderly generation helped shape the world as we know it (for better or worse) and I want to give back. Second, when I do stay at a nursing home in the future, I would want people to keep me company as well.
All in all, retirement homes are not as gloomy as I imagined them to be (which brings me to the place I will never volunteer: hospitals) and interacting with seniors is more fun than I thought it would be even though our ideas of fun may not coincide.