My mother lived to be 99. And until she was about 98 she had all her marbles. When she was 94 she gave up her apartment and moved into a senior hotel in Long Beach. It was a very nice place, not too big – not too small. She could talk to people and participate in whatever limited programs they had. The dining room offered menus with several choices at each meal and she never complained about the food. Of course, she had a very small appetite and was easily pleased because she didn’t eat much. I think that after a lifetime of cooking, she had lost all interest in food.
I called her every day. One day when she was living in the hotel for about 2 years, and about 96, she sounded kind of down so I asked her if she was okay and she said- in a really not okay tone- that she was okay she guessed. I persisted and she said she wondered how long she would have to go on living. Nothing was any good anymore. I said “Mom, why not just relax and enjoy yourself? You deserve it. Look”, I said, “you don’t even have to make your bed in the mornings, or shop, or cook, or worry about cleaning the house. What more do you want?” “I want”, she said, “to be 90 again.”
At some point, in some way, my mother met a man there. A new-comer. I have no idea how it started but he and she became quite close and she even asked me if she could bring her “boyfriend” to the annual family Christmas party. Of course she could. We were all dying to meet him. And of course he came with her.
Well, it seemed that Bill, that was his name, was just a kid of 89 and kept teasing her for being an older woman, and so much older than him. And my mom just wanted to do what a lot of women did down through the ages – shave a couple of years off the top.
