I’ve come to really appreciate the elderly. One morning while sitting in church I noticed a lot of them and immediately became saddened. I started thinking about the wealth of knowledge that’s locked inside of them and cringed at how the younger generations in our society scathes it. Once people grow to a certain age, we pass them off to nursing homes and assisted living facilities so we don’t have to ‘bear the burden’ of taking care of their failing bodies.
But as I sat there in church and thought about all of the aged wisdom sitting around me, I just wanted to go unlock it. I wanted to go thrust some of the kids in the church in front of them and say, “impart your wisdom into this generation.” I wanted to sit in front of them myself and ask the same thing.
I went and visited my grandmother a few weeks ago. It was good to see her when I was back in Wichita. She’s got a wealth of stories locked inside of her and now I wish that I had been more intentional about asking her to share them when I was growing up.
We were sitting there talking and she said, “why… I’ve been taking a lot of naps lately.”
“Really? I wish I could take more naps, ” I said.
“Well, just the other day I took three naps! I woke up, ate my breakfast, got tired and laid back down. I did that off and on all day.”
“Three naps in one day would rock, grandma.”
And then the best thing happened. My grandma chuckled and started laughing to herself, leaned over from her chair and said youthfully, “that sure would be a good way to go! HAHA!”
I love that my grandma was able to laugh at death. It’s not something to be feared. She’s lived an amazing life and she has an outlook on it that more young people need to grasp. I think a lot of the elderly are like that, actually.
