Those 70ish Girls

Old-timers Disease

By Valerie Halla

When I was young, I was fortunate to have my grandparents and elderly Great Aunts and Uncles around. I liked helping them and listening to them tell stories. Then as I became a teenager, I started to slip away from hanging around older people and didn’t give older relatives nor just old people in general any thought. I even avoided having anything to do with them. Yes, it was mean, but I was young and wanted to be surrounded by fun, energetic, like minded individuals. It wasn’t cool to be seen with wrinkled, gray haired, slow moving people.

You know how hummingbirds zip by when you’re outside and sometimes jerk to a halt midair or randomly watch a stream of water from the hose? That is how I see my time in this life. It zips by quickly and jerks to a stop sometimes briefly. Now I am 70ish and it’s making sense even through my hard headed mind that as you get older the light no matter how dim, comes on. I see now why as I was so young, my elders were trying to still be relevant. Even as they were sliding, slowing down and reaching their golden years they wanted to be a part of our family and society sharing stories from their youth to help we young folks see who they were and where their place in history was, no matter how small a slice they had carved out. Their lives mattered.

I’m hoping I don’t get Alzheimer’s but I guess if you told me I already had it, I wouldn’t know. I would just think that I’m normal anyway. I don’t think any of my grandparents had it. Grandpa Sanderson was very sharp and Grandma had a good sense of humor and always had pies, sauces and food ready for us. A doctor would need to tell me and then it would hit home, if I had Alzheimer’s, and would hit me hard and painfully. Mostly I would feel bad for my family. One cousin told us that when you have Alzheimer’s, you meet the nicest people.

One day when our one son was about 8 years old, we drove by a man in our neighborhood who clearly was walking with difficulty, head bobbing, jerky walk and looking about erratically. He seemed lost. Our son stared out the car window pointing at him and declared, “That man must have old-timer’s disease!” At the time we thought that was a cute way to say it, but later we sobered up. I later called the police to report our concern and they said they would go check on the man. It’s not funny and Alzheimer’s is a serious disease with no cure at present. It mostly affects older people so now that I am 70ish, it’s a possibility the disease could sneak up on me. There is much to worry about now in my later years.

I have a 78 year old friend with many health concerns and she goes for medical tests, infusions for rheumatoid arthritis, CT scans, AFIB and many other things. She almost died from a kidney bleeding this year. When I asked if she has had a colonoscopy she said, “No, never but with all I’m going through health wise I just say, ‘Get in line.‘“

I’m feeling the need to be relevant, to socialize and say hello to people even when young people often don’t say hello back. But I get it. In youth, older adults often don’t count or are off the grid of a twenty-something’s vision for the future. The shoe is on the other foot now when you turn into an old-timer. I am learning that. It’s a different world.