Sometimes I Bore Myself with My Limited Life

Nothing Much to Say

As life forces me inwards in old age, I find I have less and less to talk about. We complain, of course, that society renders us invisible as we age, and so it does, but are we complicit in that process when we make our world smaller?

I first noticed this turning-in business in my mother years ago. Even though her phone (a dial-up) might ring only once a week — if that — she used to take it off the hook for morning and afternoon tea and at mealtimes. She would say, “As sure as eggs if the phone rings, it will do so when I’m busy”.

Even if you are lucky enough to find yourself in old age (I don’t say ‘reach’, for few of us aspire to that state), the decline is likely to be there in one form or another, like it or not and retreating inward is probably a natural part of that process, as is resisting onslaughts that prevent peace.

Why is My Life Limited?

Mum also took the phone off when she showered because the sensuality of hot water flowing over her ageing body brought comfort by dissolving the rest of the world, as it does for me. Still, when you are alone in a limited social and physical space, your sensitivity to others and outside forces increases. I hope articulating my irritations here will alleviate boredom, if only for a moment.

Electronic Communications

Living as I do in a multi-storey retirement village, I am often on tenterhooks when a delivery is due, waiting for the imperious buzzer that tells me I must let someone into the building. When I’m expecting a delivery, I’m scared to go to the loo in case I miss it.

From buzzers to ring tones, my new iPhone rings as infrequently as Mum’s old green handset used to. Yet it beeps with endless messages around deliveries, first of all advising me something is due. A second message telling me a parcel has been delivered comes after delivery, as though I couldn’t guess that from buzzing someone into my building.

I signed up for an Australia Post Parcel Locker to avoid the tension of waiting beside the buzzer. Like other deliverers, Australia Post texts to say something is ready for collection, then emails a thank you once I collect, as though I’ve done it a service. The first two texts are followed, often by email and text, by a request for a rating. These nuisance texts — misnamed communications — allow the source of goods to give itself points for good customer relations.

As I order most things online, this triple electronic bombardment surrounding deliveries is bloody invasive. Does it forestall loneliness? No! It is not communication but an interruption to one’s peace on par with noisy neighbours.

Noisy Neighbours

I am often subjected to the continuous sound of someone’s radio or television in the background when I am trying to write. Not quite loud enough to hear what is being said or played, it is a muffled but insane-making thrum of media cadences that penetrates not ears but the mind. For someone like me who loves silence, it touches all the wrong buttons. It may seem odd if I tell you that identifiable sounds, like traffic and trams outside, don’t bother me. I can even withstand the weekend invasion of motorbikes, but I’m allergic to evidence of neighbours.

One person on my level is 97. She leaves her door open day and night unless she goes out, which is rare. Every morning, two people from Meals on Wheels shout cheery greetings at her door at 11:30 as though they are Father Christmas. She is deaf, and her TV regularly drowns mine out through my tightly locked door, as does the indecipherable chatter and laughter that erupt from her unit on weekends and the late afternoon gossip fest she seems to host with others on our level every afternoon — in the corridor outside my door.

When I hear Meals on Wheels’ daily happy-clappy voices, the word patronising leaps to mind. It’s fine to feel good for doing good, serving the elderly as a volunteer, but I prefer the genuine friendliness of my harried commercial delivery drivers from Coles, Lite & Easy and Uber Eats, for they treat you like a person in control of your faculties. That said, if the day comes that I need or want Meals on Wheels, I may allow myself to enjoy that jollity.

Then There’s the Laundry

I used to silently mock my mother in Glenelg’s Kapara Nursing Home when she begged me to wash her tiny nighties (she was four and a half stone when she died) because she didn’t want her clothes washed “with the dementia patients’ stuff”.

My problem is similarly laundry-related. I loathe the cloying odours of someone else’s stale fabric softener and soap scale lining the rim of the shared washing machine’s barrel. I wonder if the offending residents believe there is a magical staff member who will appear in a cloud of stardust to clean up after them. I should write a poem about that.

Not everybody on my floor is inconsiderate, but one new resident adds insult to injury. Despite a prominent laundry roster, she seems to think her washing can stay in the dryer, in the machine or on the line forever. I could go on about my laundry blues, but I don’t want to bore myself so much that I won’t finish this post.

My Solutions

How do I turn inward? In the laundry, I limit myself by washing around 5 or 6 in the morning when nobody else is around. It’s not hard as I am always awake at that time. I also refuse to store anything in each floor’s small residents’ storeroom. (I don’t want my stuff leaning against theirs!) I lock myself in to luxuriate in solitude and comfort to write or look out at the City of Glenelg from my balcony.

In recent months, I’ve had two new friends across the way, two cranes. One is blue and the other yellow. I watch in wonder as the operators work high in the sky with such precision. What a job. They must climb hundreds of zig-zagging fire escape-style steps in a small vertical cage to get into their pod.

Seeing novel things up close like that is a delight. My balcony view excites my imagination. Sadly, the yellow crane disappeared last week as its building nears completion, but the blue one will be there to entertain me for months to come.

External Factors

While hiding or retreating (looking out from within) offers a solution at home, external factors also play a role in diminishing one’s quality of life.

Health Checks for the Elderly is a doozy. Like Meals on Wheels, the intention of geriatric (75 and up) checkups is good, but they create a profile for posterity denuded of history and personality. All identity is effaced as formal detail constructs a failing body for management.

In my sixties, I scorned the idea of these tests, but by 75, after my first, I learned that they could help provide access to support services and funding. Recently, I asked for an 80-year-old assessment. The completed 10-page form appears in the photo. After seeking consent, the assessor probes your life against these headings — 

Background information (domicile) — Medical History — Relevant Family History — Medications — Immunisation Status — Allergies — Alcohol — Smoking History — Social History (a misnomer)— Other Health Care Providers — Mobility/Activity — Home Safety (can you bathe yourself)— Nutrition — Frailty Screen — Oral Health — Vision — Hearing — Personal Wellbeing and Safety Assessment — Cognition — Continence — Skin and Feet — Assessor Comments and Assessment. (my inserts in brackets)

Wow! What a profile it makes. I have now been screened as pre-frail.

Not so long ago, I was also required to undertake a supplementary assessment with My Aged Care. They lost the original done seven years ago to access subsidised ancillary services such as podiatry, physiotherapy, a nutritionist and exercise classes. The recent assessment took 1.5 hours. The assessor had no medical or nursing training, yet the last thing the questionnaire asked of me was to demonstrate how I get in and out of bed. That took me by surprise.

Forgive me for breaching taboo by writing about these things. I cannot imagine having a scintillating conversation over wine about the potential impact all this measuring of ageing bodies can have. Faced with such facts, it is instinctive to fall silent and turn further inward. These are not popular topics for lunchtime chit-chat chat, even though they start to fill one’s life in old age.

Time

Ageing disorganises our success calendar as book launches, theatre, concerts, poetry gigs, parties, and coffee or lunch on the sidewalk with friends give way to a merry-go-round of medical appointments. The slow loss of social identity that ensues tends to limit acceptable topics of conversation. Relatedly, people increasingly speak to or address us by age grade rather than in terms of our character or personality, which is painfully patronising.

I say we turn inward as we age, and I certainly have. It may not happen to everyone or at the same time for all. The sad thing is that it would be so easy to succumb to the official view that we are nothing more than our failing bodies. It is a form of silencing when people cease to find our history, achievements and experience interesting because of our age.

For Sanity’s Sake

In the meantime, I have poetry and creative friends in my life with the TramsEnd Poets critique group. I run a poetry workshop at the local community centre, and the first draft of my new novel is nearing completion. Then, there is Facebook, and I have Wattletales. While my writing keeps me happy, I am once again pretending I can paint.

I prefer sketching, but the Glenelg Community Centre offers a watercolour group at a good time, so painting it is. I thought it was a sign of regression to use block paints as we did in childhood, albeit in a plastic ‘tin’ as pictured above, but I’m told they are more acceptable now.

When I moved into my retirement unit, I gave away hundreds of dollars worth of art supplies I’d accumulated over the years. So, I nearly died of shock to discover that a small tube of Winsor & Newton watercolour paint now costs around $23. Still, paint is paint, and I’m no artist, so what the heck? You’ve gotta live while you can.

To read more about Retirement Living, click here. For further insight into old age, click here.

Happy Writing — Stay Creative

Wattletales