7 Kettles

At the beginning of this semester, in my 12:30pm English class, a woman of at least 80 sauntered in and sat at the ADA desk.  I’ve seen her come into the 501 before.  She drives up in a red convertible with the top down, her curly afro blowing in the wind, and always lets us know exactly where she wants to sit.

She told us that her name is Bristol, and that she’d been living at the Nursing Home for a few years, and that she doesn’t like it.  She says they try to regulate almost everything she does, and she still wants to move out, explore the world and continue learning. 

It’s so funny though.  Most of us are in school because we have hopes of getting degrees to prove to potential employers later on in our lives that we have what it takes to persevere and make something of ourselves (even though about 50% of people in the workforce do something that is in no way correlated to their degree).  But for her, it’s completely different.  She’s very, very old.  She doesn’t have long left on this Earth.  Odds weigh heavily that she won’t use anything she learns in Intro to Poetry & Drama or whatever class she may be attending now to try to construct a future career for herself. 

I guess she’s just curious as to what all is happening in the world.  She’s bored with the nursing home.  She wants to go out and do things.

My first thought for her was, “Wow, what’s the point of going back to school?  She’s just going to die in like 5 years anyway.”  But going back, I feel awful for even thinking that.  What should she do, just sit in a corner of the nursing home and wait until she dies?  No way!  If she’s still mobile, as she clearly is, she should be out there living, exploring and interacting.

It sort of changes the way you look at everything.  If it’s worth getting out into the world to explore it when you only have five years to live, maybe all this career-building, all this major-scouting, maybe it’s not really what life is all about.

I’ve already decided that when my health comes into decline, I refuse to try to prolong my death by forcing my family to care for me in bed, barely able to communicate, relying on IVs and pills and drugs and oxygen tanks just to stay alive.  I just want to go.  When it’s my time, I just want to go.

Is this a problem our government thinks about on a regular basis?  “What, really, should we do with our old?  They can’t really work for us, many are in very poor health, all connected to tubes and wires, and have a poor quality of life.  So let’s put them in homes where they can be with other similarly decomposed individuals.”  It’s kind of like quarantining them, really, isn’t it?

And if it’s as strict and regulatory as Ms. Bristol talks about it being, it certainly doesn’t sound like a fun, comfortable place where you can, you know, hang out and bond with other old people, chatting about bodily malfunctions and all the different things you’ve all forgotten.

Ms. Bristol hasn’t come back since the second or third day of class.  I wonder if maybe the Nursing Home decided they didn’t want to allow her this particular liberty.  It’s too dangerous, perhaps they say.  The class meets on the third floor, but there is an elevator, so she should be able to make it okay if she still wanted to come.  We all welcome it.  She made us laugh pretty hard the first couple of days (and not at her, with her), and it’s so interesting that she’s still out and doing things.

This is a video by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros.  It features a gang of old-timers in a neighborhood firework and graffiti war, playing ding-dong ditch on each other and splashing in huge puddles.  I want to be like them when I'm old.  I want to be an exciting old man, the one who the grandkids can't wait to see.  I don't want to be a rambling old grouch who complains about the difference in technological advancement as days have gone past, I want to be a ray of light.  I don't want to make people feel bad about religion, I want to make people feel great.

And I know for sure that this video does that for me.  I think the song is the most beautiful (seriously, the most beautiful song) I've ever heard.  If you haven't ever had the pleasure of listening, now is the perfect time.

Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla

I wonder if Ms. Bristol has got everything all figured out.  I sure hope, when I’m almost there at my deathbed, that I do.