Tell me the Old Story

In the town where I live we have a lot of retirement homes and villages. If you hit the shops on a weekday morning, you're likely to be stuck in a traffic jam of walkers and blue-haired ancients examining the shelves. Or behind a barely-visible old lady in her car, calmly driving in second gear at the minimum speed limit.

Unfortunately many of these folk are "home" less - they have been dumped into places that will care for them by family members they barely ever see, left to fend for themselves among strangers.

My gran (little gran we called her, she could fit under your armpit standing her tallest) faced just such a situation. She had longed for years to retire in a certain home in Cape Town, but once there she never ventured out her room, never made friends and slowly lost her short-term memory. She could remember walking to school with her sister Laura, and their pet cheetahs, but had to keep asking who I was. We lived a fair distance away, but those of her family who were close enough didn't have the time to spend with her.

What a wealth of knowledge these places hold. What a wisdom of years! And yet we let it rot away and die without ever tapping into the stories our elders have to tell. We never sit at their feet and learn from their experiences. We don't delve into their pasts and discover the unique and wonderful people there.

I once interviewed a 95-year-old movie theater owner for a magazine. She told tales of being the first woman to own a car in the town (a car with few brakes and no windscreen, that crashed into the local bar when she couldn't stop in time), of joyrides over the sea in the first small plane. She showed me pictures of her husband's dance band, who won the championship for non-stop playing at the first hotel. Told how in the "old days" the sailors would start fights in the upstairs section of the cinema, rolling down the stairs as they fought. The cinema is still one of the most wonderful to go to - in winter they provide knee blankets! No frills, cheap, bring your own refreshments, but you're personally thanked for attending by the manager when you leave.

I only scratched the surface of one person's story. Imagine how many more fascinating tales are contained within the walls of the old-age institutions! How many will die out when these precious gems leave the planet.

We've lost out in our modern lives - we no longer gather the tribe nightly around the fire to learn from our elders. We just ship them off to somewhere peaceful to live out their days without bothering us.

Perhaps it's time our local newspaper published some of these stories, as a means to getting them out there. I'd be more than willing to spend a few hours listening!

Yup, I think I'm gonna contact those newspaper folk...