“I have no one left but my daughter-in-law in California; what an angel!” she repeated for the second time with a heavy European accent…German maybe. Mrs. P. wasn’t the only wobbly nanogenarian in the neighborhood who had families that were no longer around. And she wasn’t the only one to claim she was “independent” when given a Morningside Village flyer: “no help needed!” Nonetheless, she took the flyer and agreed to tea. After a couple of very pleasant encounters on the streets, she invited me to her home where we talked and ate potato pancakes.
When I visited Mrs. P., a few days ago, newly returned home from the hospital after a hip fracture, she clutched onto table tops and door frames too quickly making her way back and forth, fixing things in the kitchen and bringing them into the dining room as if her feet weren’t swollen to the limit. “No, I can do this myself,” she insisted with finality, demonstrating to us both that she was surely “independent”. There would be no more discussing it. We went on to devour a plate of fried plantains and talk about a feature story in the NY Times about the Taliban.
Then, today, when I stopped in again, in addition to the hip and the feet, there she was nursing a bruised knee, swollen up to twice its former size. “It was just a little tumble,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “It happened last night. I’m fine, really.” She barely allowed me to get my own cup of tea from the kitchen, but she did. As I talked about health aides, she side-stepped into a question about eligibility. Without pushing it, I said I knew a social worker who could come give her the lowdown, and I could see that Mrs. P. had moved an inch forward toward accepting the idea that she might need some help.
Before leaving her apartment, Mrs. P. and I had an outright talk about the notion of independence. That’s when to my great delight she came up with a slogan that we could use on our flyers: “To remain independent, accept the help you need!”
As a result, Morningside Village is now launching it’s Celebrating Dependence campaign, recognizing that all of us depend on others. We depend on the farmers that grow our food, the moving men who deliver our bookshelves, the shopkeepers, the librarians, the truckers and cooks. The doctors. The teachers. The scientists. The journalists. The organizers. The artists. And the environmentalists. Mrs. P. has begun to ask, what’s one dependence more or less if it makes living contentedly more possible? Morningside Village goes one step further: “Viva Dependence!”
Irene Zola
Tags: aging in place, eldercare, eldercare village, elderly, geriatric depression, seniors, Volunteers, walkers
