Taking Stock

[Beginning today, I start transcribing the four-plus notebooks entitled “Recollections of My Life.” I will depart from the “Part One,” “Part Two,” etc. style of titling that I adhered to with “My Life in the Little Brown House.” Instead, I will try to find some theme in each posting and title them accordingly. I have never read these notebooks. Reading my father’s handwriting and typing out his words as I go, I am discovering aspects of my dad, some that I had an inkling of and many that are new to me. —LRS]

RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE

I’m old.

Not too old, that designation applies to persons older than I. I am only somewhat past eighty years of age. To be old means that the person had reached ninety years of age, if not more. But at eighty-three years of life behind me I am well beyond the Biblical threescore years and ten. However, not by reason of strength — there had been two instances in my life where only the intervention of modern medicine caused me to live on.

At eighty-three years of living, I have lived longer than either of my parents, longer than the parents of my wife, longer than three of my grandparents. My maternal grandmother died at ninety-one. Whether I shall achieve that age is, in my opinion, doubtful. All of my cousins on my father’s side of my family have been dead for several years, as also one of my three second cousins. My older sister died when she was about sixty and my younger at about eighty years of age. Two of my cousins one my mother’s side of the family have died. As to second cousins there I do not know, the Petersons were more prolific than the Strands.

I live in a “retirement” home and have for the past seven years. We moved here, selling our house, when the care of the yard and the maintenance problems associated with a house caused me (us) to want to avoid these cares. The residents here (I tend to refer to them as inmates) are mostly over eighty years of age with quite a few ninety or more. About a year ago one centenarian died. I have seen quite a few people move in, gradually fade and eventually die. Two deaths could in a way be classed as suicides. In one case a man who was on kidney dialysis took himself off the treatment; he died within a week or so. The other case was a woman in her upper nineties. Always elegantly attired she simply stopped eating and shortly expired. Both individuals had simply become tired of living any longer.

Another individual, now gone, viewed the residents (inmates) with a sardonic eye. He remarked on more than one occasion, while seated in the dining room having his midday meal, “Look at all these people, waiting to die.” He was of course absolutely correct. He suffered from emphysema, probably because of his use of tobacco. When I was first aware of him I think he had eschewed the habit. Late one I saw him smoking, maybe he thought I might as well, I am tired of living and I enjoy the smell of tobacco.

Many of the “inmates” have in my opinion nothing more to their current lives than eating, sleeping and attending to such functions as dressing, doing the laundry etc. This is evidenced by the tendency of a considerable number of them appearing early for meals and just sitting at the places they customarily occupy. By early I mean half an hour to 15 minutes. They sit at the tables doing nothing. I, and my wife, are not in this state, at least as yet. For the meals we take in the dining room, mostly only the main meal which is served at noon, we arrived only a few minutes as a rule before the waitresses start serving. And we tend to occupy ourselves while waiting for the waitresses to reach our table, my wife by knitting and me by doing crossword puzzles. There have been a few cases of people reading to occupy dead moments, but these have only been occasional and not an ongoing practice.

There are it is true some evidence of spare time activity by the inmates — plants, pets, participating in events organized by the activity director. Oregon law (I believe) requires that an installation such as Mountain View provide activities for the inmates. Bingo, card games of various sorts, an exercise session, blood pressure clinic, flu shots in the fall, excursions. Once in a while there will be a trip to a restaurant in the area, or a field trip or even a trip to Crater Lake or the coast. And shopping, the bus takes people shopping at various local outlets. But I have noticed that participation in any of these activities tends to be light, only a very limited number of inmates include themselves in these.

My wife and I live a more active life than most of the inmates. Perhaps this is because we live in one of the three cottages, each of which has a full kitchen. My wife still cooks, does genealogy, knits, sews and does mending; I still watercolor, write like I am now doing, read, go for walks, spend a lot of time thinking, oftentimes about the past. But we have little social life outside the facilities here. Lunch occasionally with friends. The Shell picnic in the park once a year.

Since the stroke I had a year or so ago we have not attended the church service on Sundays as we used to once a month and I have indicated that I will no longer act as usher. Perhaps we will never attend again, attendance had become a rather unsatisfying event for both of us.

The situation we are in is where every day is much the same as the one before, and where we observe the gradual failing of those living here, in some case not so gradual but passing from a level of reasonable activity to very restricted activity, even death in a rather short time. We (I) sense in ourselves the slow deterioration in physical activity and stamina, and capability. It leads in me, perhaps not in Jean, to the wish that existence with its cares and concerns were over. Not that we have any particular or immediate concerns, our future till we die will probably be free of most of the worries that are the lot of many elderly people. Our life has provided us with the material means to live out our days without the worry of how we will fund our existence.

But I am old and weary. Weary of the tenor of our existence, weary of the increasing physical debility that affects me, weary of the pettiness, lack of perceptivity, greed, sectarian egotism that surrounds me in the legislative, executive and judicial bodies of the various governmental levels and in the general tide of humanity. I much confess that this weariness has become more manifest as I grow older, but I sense that it has always been an undercurrent running throughout my life. There have certainly been periods of satisfaction and enjoyment in my life — these have been obscured and at times obviated by the sense of weariness with existence, but have not eliminated the wearied feeling. My life has been mostly the conventional one and in the course of it I have joined my life with that of my wife, I have participated in generating the lives of our three daughters. Were it not that my life is intertwined with theirs, I could easily wish that I have never been conceived or born. As I view life from the perspective of my eighty-three years I sense that it is an entrapment in the ongoing existence of mankind, and entrapment that those born into it must face and accommodate in one way or another. There is, I think, something inherently unjust in this process in that it imposes life come what may.