Part One: The “Downside”

This two part diary will hopefully make you think, laugh, cry, get angry, and then get even.  Part One will paint you picture of my own experience living with these three “dreaded outcomes” thus far, hopefully with humor spiced up with a sprinkle of snark.  

Part Two, will reveal my own discoveries of the very unexpected, very bright upside of all of this, that I run into more of more of almost every day.

First off, the word “old” is not, and never has been a pejorative term to me.  I was raised to respect my elders, and I spent a good portion of a long career in nursing caring for them and learning from them all.   I regard getting old a flat out, freakin’ victory, and a time of richly deserved harvesting of seeds sown over a lifetime.
As for being “poor”, it’s nothing all that new to a single mother, or to someone who learned long ago what the word “enough” really means. And one who now knows for a fact just how fast “financial security” can evaporate right in front of ones astonished eyeballs.

Now the label “DISabled”, that one does give me frequent fits. What a horribly disempowering word that is, to me.  Only my spinal column (and a few other joints) are no longer working so well. The REST OF ME IS JUST FINE, thank you vera much!

However, I am not seen that way by most of those in my external world.  Hell, once they look (down, of course) on this white haired old woman zipping around on an used and battered second hand scooter, it’s all over. Nothing there worth pausing for.

Once this white haired former stock car and snowmobile racer is spotted driving down the road in my old green mini van,  it doesn’t matter that I am going 15 or 20 miles over the speed limit, I am STILL in the way of most of the SUV’s, and F 150s,  who have an amazing variety of different sounding horns.  

And now that I live in a large Senior Apartment complex with a whole lot of folks much  older than myself, (one that draws a goodly number of kind hearted people who come here to “enrich” our lives)  I have discovered even more of how it feels to be interacted with as IF..

  1. Old people are all deaf. ( so one must speak very slowing and loudly)
  2. Old people all lose at least half their IQ points when their hair turns white, (so speak very clearly, in the simplest possible, easy to understand language, like you would to a child.)
  3. Old people are all lonely and unloved, and are never touched. (So be sure to pat them somewhere, or lay a loving hand on their arm as you bless them with your presence)
  4. Old people all just LOVE sing-a-longs, Bingo, free food, and cutesy little hand made gee gaws they can take home to hoard.

(I could go on and on, but you get the picture)

(However, for an attempt at balance, let me add in here my sincere gratitude for all the more evolved folks who  can and DO relate to me as if I was still 40, employed, still good looking and in possession of a highly functional mind.)

As for getting out and about in today’s “handicapped accessible” world, (designed primarily, I am convinced, by the able bodied), let me say the progress made is very much appreciated.  It is really nice to not have to struggle up and over endless curbs, and to have bathroom stalls that can accommodate a walker or wheelchair. I do not mean to sound ungrateful for progress made, such as big box stores providing those little electric scooters for mobility impaired shoppers.

But let me tell you about the reality of being dependent on those cute little scooters. . First of all, if you see six of then lined up waiting, you can be pretty sure there may actually be one or two that freakin WORK, on good day that is. On a not so good day, there aren’t any, and then your choice is to sit and wait an hour for one that is in use, or leave.

Most often however, you get one that moves at approximately the speed of a crippled snail. You KNOW you could lay down and roll up and down the aisles faster than that.

Then there’s the tiny factoid no one took into consideration at all, as far as I can tell, which is that half the merchandise you need sits on shelves so high that unless you are an long armed ape, forget it. You really didn’t need that anyway. OR you have your cane along, try to hook onto a high up desired object, only to have it fall on your head, risking  the loss of even MORE brain cells.

You also need to get used to the dirty looks of busy shoppers who can’t always zip past your little electric scooter fast enough.  I love spotting these, taking all the time I need, then smiling sweetly into their tight. irritated faces with “How nice of you to wait for me to finish!” in very sincere tones.  

Then there’s places like the Conservatory here,(hey,  in long Minnesota winters that’s the place to GO!),  where the handicapped parking spaces are so far from the entryway that you have to be fit enough for Grandmas Marathon to even make it to the door!   That, of course, is not too much of an obstacle to those of us rich enough to afford a specially designed  vehicle with hydraulic lifts to accommodate the easy loading  and unloading of expensive power chairs, but none of us poorer folks are likely to have a set up like that very soon.

Most places, like restaurants however, do have parking close to the door. That’s nice. But there are still many challenges, such as how do you get to your table with your rolling walker, when all the aisles are packed with people seated at tables in an arrangement designed to seat as many customers as humanely possible into the  allotted money generating space?  

Well, I’ll tell you how. You stand there while everyone stops eating and watches you disrupt the mealtime of a couple of dozen people, who have to stand and move their chairs in so you can get by.  When you DO make it too your table, you hope to hell you don’t need to use the bathroom, because there you go again, disrupting peoples digestion.  This all frequently tends to take away my appetite, and staying in and ordering pizza sounds pretty good.

Unless it happens to be a day when I feel like doing more of my own form of activism which now only requires me to don the necessary protective inner gear, go wherever I damned well want to go, do it at my own speed, assuming the right to take up the space I need, all with head held high.  Some days I’m up to it, some days I’m not. Which is ok, cuz on those days I can sit here and write!

(One request to all able bodied readers: for your own sakes, set aside a day, just one day, when you commit to being  super AWARE of the ease with which you can move about the world,  to do all of the things you need and wish to do.  Savor each easy movement, thinking consciously of how wonderfully your bodies are working to serve you. Pause to be ever so thankful for it and to it.  Promise your precious body you will do your best not to abuse it, overwork it, or ever take it for granted and that you will take very good care of it always.  Do this often enough and I can guarantee you won’t wear out your body as fast as I did!) )

One other group of folks I made it my life’s mission to avoid as much as is humanely possible is the medical profession.  You see, I know this one from the inside out, and I know of no other place where so many concentrated stereotypes about old folks abound.  Especially us poorer ones.

 I must search long and hard for a physician willing to respect the fact that I am a seasoned RN and that having my hair turn white actually did NOT suck all of that knowledge right out of my head, who can handle the role of being a “partner” with me in my health care issues, not some  medical “god” to whom I hand over sole control of my body.  Hospitals?  Only if I am unconscious and unable to resist.

The potential of ever having to be in a “nursing home” doesn’t exist for me either: I know waaaay too much about these, and will cheerfully perform a `Thelma and Louise” type maneuver before they EVER get their mitts on this old woman, and that is a promise. ( On a scooter, under a freight train, with the press present.)

One more area must be addressed, and I will lump it all together under the heading of “Helping Systems” that those in my position are sometimes forced to call upon.  This includes the Social Security system and any country/state human service connected agencies.  Once again, for balance, without these, I would now be a fairly colorful bag lady, somewhere hopefully warmer than Minnesota, so again, I am grateful these existed and worked as well as they have so far.   But it comes at a very hefty price that those of us who really do need these services pay every day, in terms of the more often then not dehumanizing, degrading effects of these systems that so often seem to have become downright adversarial.

Put overworked, underpaid, often burned out people in positions of having to say yes or no to peoples requests for help, charged them with weeding out all who would abuse those systems at every opportunity,  place all of this in huge inefficient  bureaucracies that are choking to death on red tape and rules and regs  that change ever other day according to what the fat cats in office determine is best, and ask yourself how else could it possibly turn out?  

It can and does make mincemeat of those working within these systems, and those who dependent on them are sorely dehumanized and diminished as human beings. Yes, even those of us with lots of self esteem and knowledge and awareness to start with.  It has taken everything IN me to not stay diminished by needing and asking for what help I have needed from these systems that I helped finance over my 45 year long work history.  Humor and snark have deserted me in these last few  paragraph, as you can see.  No way could I make this part easier to read. (There is, however, even an upside to this part too,  but you’ll have to wait until the next diary!)  

Oh yes, it has all been a very eye opening experience. It feels like you go to bed one day an “ordinary, productive, tax paying citizen”, and wake up a few days later tossed off to the side like a used beer can!   One day you are a “valued port of the system”, the next you are seen as a burden ON the system.   One day you have credibility, the next you don’t. Poof! Gone.  One day people see you and respect you, and the next you are an all but invisible irritant to most of the busily productive people around you.

And so it often goes, in a culture that has come to value youth, beauty, physical productivity, and the acquisition of money and status as the primary measure of personal worth and success in life.  

I am so grateful to have had the previous opportunity to experience how different it is for the elderly and disabled in other cultures, like the Native Anmerican and Mexican American cultures. For me, it felt like a dream I’d had forever, that really does exist after all.

You’d have to search very hard to find an American any more patriotic that I was, who loved this country any more than I did, or who worked any harder than I did for my little tiny piece of that American Dream.  

It was, and it still is, a Good American Dream for many.  It is Dream being lived today by those who were born to, or have found their way up to the higher levels on the “pyramid of worth” that this culture has built for itself.  It is a pyramid of personal worth based on wealth, status, youth, gender, race, and power and it the only societal structure most Americans have ever known.  

My given starting place on that pyramid of worth, assigned at ,y birth as a 1940 model female, was a whole lot closer to the bottom of that  pyramid than it was to the top.   I did the very best I could to climb up the side of it, but then I wore my body out, and fell right off the damned thing.

It’s important to me that you understand my experiences are but a reflection of those of more
kinds of “others” than can be imagined, many of whom just “accept how it is” here for all of us near the bottom of the dear ol pyramid.  Well, I can’t and I won’t, not in silence. Not anymore.  

It has taken me a long time to become actually grateful for my rather undignified fall off that American “pyramid of worthiness”  Like most others who come up against the unthinkable, I had to just lay there feeling worthless, powerless, and totally defeated awhile.  

Well.

THAT’S over!  

Congratulations! You have made it past the rougher part of this tale.   From here on it’s all good news.  

And this is where I shall leave you for now, wondering what happened next.

If you’d like to know how anyone in their right mind, (who now has been “officially” declared “Old, Poor, and Disabled”) could possibly make the following  statement, in all honesty, (and swear to you that is is true for me 99 % of the time)

 “I have never, in 65 years, felt richer, safer, or worth more than I do right now.”

….you’ll just have to .stay tuned for Part Two!  

(which I’d LIKE to title, ” Well, FUCK YOU and your “American Dream” TOO! “. but I can’t, because some small scaredy-cat  part of me  is still afraid of having my mouth washed out with lye soap. Again.)