People who have read Helping Yourself Grow Old are already asking if I am working on a sequel.
The answer is that I can’t even think about another book, because I am too busy trying to make this one fly. But the other day I posted on facebook, feeling a little bold and saying so, because I had accepted a speaking invitation ten months and many miles from here. I wanted to say that I don’t want to be presumptuous but find it necessary to make a plan.
To this my friend Nancy responded, “Post Script: I Will Make Plans.”
Other post scripts have occurred to me. In fact, I had barely decided that the manuscript of my book was finished and begun proof reading when I discovered that my lack of energy had a reason–a bleeding tumor in my colon. I already shared a little about that potentially life-threatening situation, even about getting rid of the “crutches” I had for awhile. But there is more.
Genetic testing during surgery and afterward told the amazing story that I am both vulnerable to cancer and genetically set up to resist it. Because of scientific evidence that I am blessed, the oncologist did not want to give me any treatment but just let my body heal itself as it had done several times already.
It is all a gift. Life does its best to keep going. I am so busy receiving gifts that I have no time to record them. And I am aware that in my old age I have many advantages. Genetic testing. Health insurance to pay my bills. A house to live in.
Now and then I stop and think: there are old people living on the street.
Several years ago I met such a person. She was standing in front of the Amtrak station in San Jose, California, asking people for money to buy breakfast. She might have been seventy. Just a guess. Her face, as well as her hair, had a gray, exhausted look. I stopped, put down my bag and fumbled in my purse for a handful of coins and hurried on.
Later this woman came into the station and bought a cup of hot noodles. I noticed that she also spoke with a man who was sitting there, like me, waiting for the train to Sacramento. Then she came to me and thanked me for the money I had given her, apologizing at the same time that she had not been completely truthful. “What I really hoped for,” she said, “was enough for a ticket to Sacramento, and I got it.”
She now had the look of a person who was relieved, as though someone had just that moment lifted some load off her back. She sat down beside me, and said, “The hardest thing about living on the street is getting any rest. I can never get any sleep.” I noticed her hands on the cup of noodles. Rough hands, dry and cracked, a little swollen, with broken nails.
I asked how long she had been homeless, and she told me. I have forgotten what she said, but it was a long time to live on the sidewalk.
She wanted to tell somebody that everything was going to be better. “My granddaughter in Sacramento says I can come and live with her. Tonight I’m going to sleep in a bed.”
I have thought of her so many times and prayed that she felt loved and wanted in her granddaughter’s home and was finding ways to give back.
I’m just telling the story now to say that I know I have many advantages. Being old is so much harder for some people than for others. And most of us have much to be grateful for, none of it a reason to boast. Tonight I am going to sleep in a bed.