Will the Year Be New?

A new year is upon us, while I am still looking back.

Just a few months ago, in the laundry room, I met a new resident of the assisted care community. She was beautiful, her eyes such a friendly blue, her gray hair lying in soft waves, her smile lighting up that drab little room. She had some question about the dryer. And she, in her clothes so neat and classy, admired my jacket and claimed she would like to have it, if ever I didn’t want it anymore.

Here and there I met her. In the hall, the lounge. I liked her. We compared stories about how we inherited our old fashioned names.

One day, in the dining room, she opened the basket on her walker and showed me how she had equipped herself for every emergency. Sanitizer. Lip balm. Tissues. A roll of toilet paper and other items, mostly things we don’t talk about in polite company. We enjoyed a wonderful laugh.

Only a few days later she was untidy, disheveled and disoriented. After that I didn’t see her. I heard she fell. I heard she had been taken to “Memory Care.” And then this week her picture appeared in the “In Memoriam” corner. So soon. Too soon.

None of the things in her basket were about dying.

A year ago when 2022 was approaching, offering us hope that covid would go away and take with it a few of our problems, I didn’t quite realize how quickly people decline sometimes, with no pandemic needed. And this seems somehow relevant to thinking about the coming year.

Today already, trying to be courteous, I wished several people a Happy New Year.

But will the year be new? In any way at all?

Will we resolve any of our differences? Heal any wounds? Avoid any oncoming conflicts? Defeat any diseases? Get any younger? See something wonderful that we never saw before?

Or was the poet-philosopher of Ecclesiastes right when he said, “There is nothing new under the sun”?

Well, one of the things I finally understood this year is that “under the sun” means just that: from an earthly point of view. In the physical realm, that we know too well, the sun rises and sets and rises again without changing anything.

There is nothing new. This is the obvious, worldly and pessimistic view.

And this, according to the wise poet, is the reason one should remember her creator, remember before she is stooped and the lights dim and the songs muffled and she doesn’t even care.

So, the “new” year approaches, and what shall we pray for relevant members of our family or for us, the elderly in assisted living?

That we, all of us, like my beautiful friend with her walker, be prepared for every emergency? The failing of the body, the confusion of the mind?

Why not? We had better. There will be emergencies ahead for all of us.

Yesterday a woman whose mind seems to come and go was weeping. She told me she would be okay, “When I remember who I am.”

If you pray, ask that we know who we are and keep our memories. Even when I don’t like myself, I want to remember who I am. That person who did a hard job. That person who raised a family.

Right now, speaking as one of the elderly, I feel young in several ways. A little bit ignorant, which is like childhood. Hungry for chocolate when I think I should eat an apple. But old because of a long, long memory and worried about the world, about democracy, about the Afghan refugees, about random gunfire in the streets and schools, about the failures of my generation and what my grandchildren are going to face.

If you love us old people, take care of the world you live in, because we love it and you.

Most of all, if you love us, just stay in our lives. Be present. I am shocked to discover how few people in Memory Care have family members who come frequently and stay involved in their lives. The sight of a familiar face can be a powerful stimulation, a light coming on in a dark and lonely place.

And pray that, at the right time, those who are tired and confused will slip off to the place where everything is new, unencumbered by the small objects in the baskets of their walkers.

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