What Lies Before Us
My 92-year-old mother-in-law has decided to go into a “senior vacation residence” — a euphemism, of course, for what used to be termed an old folks’ home. What she’s picked out doesn’t look like the old folks’ homes of yore. The layout of the place bears a striking resemblance to the inside of a cruise ship. And for a moment or two, the visitor is fooled by this decorative trompe d’oeil…but not for long. An old folks’ home is an old folks’ home, no matter what you call it.
Anyway, yesterday my younger son and I went by to check out Granny’s new digs for ourselves before the old girl signs the lease and writes the check. Like I said, it’s an attractive place. The managers and staff are affable. The aromas of dinner cooking in the kitchen were remarkably appetizing. There was a table of dressed-to-kill ladies heatedly engaged in a cut-throat game of poker. A pianist was playing Cole Porter on the baby grand.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Which was why I was puzzled by my growing feeling of pure terror. My heart palpitated, my palms sweated, I felt dizzy, I couldn’t breathe. If I didn’t get out of there immediately, I would pass out on the Aubusson carpet under the giant crystal chandelier. It wasn’t a Club Med party boat this residence looked like — it was the doomed Titanic and all these Golden Oldies were going down in it.
As we drove away, I realized what had triggered the massive panic attack. “That’s my future!” I told my son. “One day I’ll have to go to a place like that. I’d rather be dead! I don’t want to spend my last days with a dreary bunch of old people!”
My son reminded me of two things. First, “Phoebe Kate shalt abideth in an old folks’ home” was not one of the laws God imparted to Moses on Mount Sinai. And second, if I should end up in such, it would be nothing like what I’d seen that day.
“You’ll be hanging out with the rest of the 60s generation,” he told me. “They’ll be cool, like you. Peace, love, flower power, weed. You’ll all groove to the Doors and the Stones and Dylan and Led Zeppelin. It’ll be a blast. Woodstock revisited.”
I’d like to think that — that when we Baby Boomers become octogenarians, we will bop around the halls of old folks’ home in faded jeans and flip-flops and tie-dye shirts and peacock feather earrings and peace symbol necklaces and love beads, humming “Let the Sunshine In” and “Yellow Submarine.” We’ll stage sit-ins demanding that only organic food be served in the dining room. Cool old musicians with long gray ponytails will play Jim Croce songs on their guitars to entertain us. The lobby won’t have a crystal chandelier but an enormous disco ball. And we’ll all sneak out after dark and smoke a doobie (for medicinal purposes only, I assure you.)
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Perhaps the process of aging won’t change us fearless, freewheeling former hippies into old farts who fret about their bowels and fear everything and everyone. Hopefully, the egalitarian, magnanimous, big-hearted, fun-loving spirit of the 60s will carry on into our dotage and turn old folks’ homes into a happening sort of place to be.
Oh well, if not, there’s always 2012 to look forward to. Rock on, Mayans.
–phoebe kate
Oh, I hope so, too. My original plan was to go lie on a park bench with a jug of water and go out like the ‘old ones’ did in the past. If we had a colony of Vickings, that would be a good alternative, too. More and more people are talking about setting up communal types of living arrangements for ‘that time’. Everyone pitches in for expenses and help.
Ladies, count me in.