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| Mount Snowdon 2014 |
Inspirational people like Olive Riley (108 yr old Blogger), and 102 yr old Buster Martin are just two of the reasons I am going on my Last Great Adventure (LGA) others who inspire me are the 92 yr old lady who clouted a mugger in New York with her Brolly and the 84 yr old Victorian woman who climbed Mount Everest. But the greatest inspiration of all is the human condition. The people whose lives are currently so much more difficult than my own.
I watched Tony Robinson in his Me and my Mum programme, in
it was a wonderful woman Rosa who is spending the best part of her young adult
life caring for her mother who suffers from dementia. During her part of the
programme she made comments concerning how she will deal with growing old, and
if she becomes like her mother and as she has no family herself...her ultimate
doom...the Care Home.
I worked for years in Care Homes, not all are bad places,
some are truly very caring, supportive places but some, a few, are the hell
holes of a so called caring society and I have witnessed it for myself.
The result of my witness was to get
sacked for speaking out !!!
The thought that one
day I would inhabit a place like that has set me thinking...what will I do when
I grow old?
For a start one has to pre - suppose that some sort of early
warning would be given you that your losing the marbles God granted you or else
a seriously strong display that your health is going to trap you in your own
home....and hopefully that is when you can make a choice.
Why is a choice necessary in the first place? Well because
quite frankly I am surrounded by our caring society as it stands now and I
don't give much for my chances of staying free, capable and sane.
I nearly wrote some examples and thought better of it,
examples of this modern day where men and women live alone, and are left to
struggle because their family are busy or they have no friends to rely on or
else they have developed peculiar traits which society cannot accept because we
are expected to all live the life the media is displaying as a
norm..............
I decided against those examples because quite frankly this
blog would turn into a sermon and that’s
not the purpose here. We ALL know of people who live alone, who struggle, and
who are independent and often refuse help more out of pride than anything. I
know very well that I am guilty of pride. It has stopped me more than once from
asking for help and I am still young enough to deal with my life...but one day
I won't be.
What to do go down in a blaze of glory or whimper away until
I fade completely? Do I intend to burden myself on my children? On my sister? Or
shall I find a beloved who could care for me if I fell or had a heart attack?
Do I climb Mount Snowdon one more time?
Or do I let nature take its course?
Or do I intend to 'leave at my own time' and swallow a
packet of whatever!!!!
The sheer fact that I am thinking about all this is not
because I am maudlin but because right up until your 50 it doesn't really
matter then you tip over the apex of life’s journey and it’s all downhill from
here...who knows how long you will live for, how long is a piece of string
?.......exactly !
So at 50 you think oops! and start to live a little more
freely, by 55 yrs your determined to live well, to spoil the
kids/grandkids/friends and then you’re facing 60 and it’s a different story
altogether...this is a serious development, your own on the slide now, it’s
getting faster and age is not a number any more, it’s an ailment.
Health matters start to raise their ugly head, not colds and
flu but arthritis, rheumatism, aching this or that, nasty tests start appearing
on the Doctors screens, suddenly life is very ,very sweet because it might not
be yours for much longer.
Then you find you can't lift the cleaner up the stairs so
you buy a lighter one and a lighter one again, you find it’s not so easy to
change the curtains anymore, the washing is a chore again.
Washing that was once done over the bath, is now done in a
push button box...and it’s just as tiring as the old method. Food is faddy,
bath time is a nightmare just in case you slip or fall or Gods forbid get stuck
in the bath. You smell your clothes and your flesh in case you smell like an
old woman. That curiously musty smell so familiar when you go visiting your
granny is suddenly possibly YOU.
Old is not a mental status it’s a factual aspect of our
flesh and it is failing us by the time we reach where I am now looking at the
door marked 'old woman'. Not yet, not for a few years but I am getting closer
to it, very close and it scares the hell out of me.
What was laughed at in my 40's is no longer a laughing
matter; the casual remark about needing a Zimmer Frame with go faster stripes
becomes a possibility. The fear that you might not wake up in the morning
becomes a threat.
Whoever said the 'state of mind' stuff obviously didn't wake
up with a back that creaks, or a knee that is stiff, or hands that swell up in
the cold. They never had to stop eating chocolates and cream and butter or
sweets because they just entered heart attack alley with the cholesterol levels
from hell. Old Age is a state of body AND a state of mind.
Living this curious learning curve is wonderful. I love
every minute of my life but I also have to start looking ahead to when I am
'old'...where will I live. Do I stay close to family, just in case I need
someone to help me? or do I go for the
last great adventure..........
PRO AND CON
The last great adventure is of course where my heart reaches
out for, what kind of adventure, where, who with, when, how, and all the
associated problems/resolutions to seek and so I made a choice.
The last great adventure it is.
How I came to this conclusion is immaterial really, the idea
of slowly vegetating in a house with no real comforts beyond an old PC and a
bit of furniture doesn't really make for a thrilling ride down the path towards
eternal oblivion.
I constantly have drama of one sort or another in my life so
traipsing off to an adventure just of my own is something that glitters on the
horizon like a diamond just out of reach. The living is there, do I reach for it and at
least try or do I write about it and pretend I did.
I decided to reach for it
and that is why this blog is being written. It is the beginning of the plan,
the very gate I shall step through to start that last adventure before I apply
for my slippers and shawl. Something to sustain my world as I slip down the
final road and stride through the final gates of life....it is, I hope, going
to be an exciting ride.
I made my mind up, either I am on a Highway to Hell or I am clambering up the Stairway to Heaven...either way I am sliding through the gates sideways, vodka in one hand...a bar of chocolate in the other, screaming 'WHAT A RIDE' .......adventures here we come.
