When I was a little boy, I was afraid of the elderly. I'm not entirely sure why that was, aside from the fact that they creaked and smelled funny.
At night, my dreams often turned to nightmares and I was haunted in my sleep by old people. I suppose "old people" doesn't sound quite politically correct these days, does it? Should I say "age challenged"?
Usually in those dreams, the elderly were silent and menacing, chasing me with a limping gait and outstretched arms, like some Night of the Living Dead zombie.
One dream continues to stand out in my mind quite vividly:
I was in the basement of my aunt's apartment building and over in a corner by the furnace sat an old lady in a wheelchair. She appeared to be dead and was covered with a thin, orange coat of rust.
As I drew near, she began to rise up out of the wheelchair, her limbs groaning like tree branches swaying in a stiff breeze. Then, with dull black eyes, she fixed her gaze on me and slowly advanced.
Being as how it was a dream, I could only run away in that heavy leg-locked slow motion kind of run. My jaws were tight and my words stuck in my throat as I tried to holler: "Jeeeessssuuuuuss Chooooorrrriiiist!"
This variety of bedtime terror remained with me for several years. Why? Perhaps it was those nursery rhymes and fairy tales I was so well-schooled in.
Let's see. There was the OLD woman in the shoe who whipped her kids. Then there was the OLD witch in "Hansel and Gretel" who wanted to bake Hansel in the oven and eat him. Of course, the Wicked Queen in "Snow White" took on the personage of an OLD lady in order to peddle the poison apple.
Yeah. That could have done it.
But in their defense, keep in mind that those old women received no monthly Social Security checks and Medicare didn't pay for their prescriptions. No wonder they were bitchy.
Throughout the 1950s and until 1962 when she passed away at 91, my grandmother was confined to, what we called back then, a rest home. It was actually a renovated two-story house that was operated by my cousin, who was a nurse.
On occasional Sundays, our family would make the 90-minute trip and visit Grandma Potter. She was a frail, tiny woman and in my memories was always wearing a white sweater and sitting in a wheelchair in her room.
She had hearing aids in both ears. To shade her weakening eyes, she wore a visor. This was long before Steve Spurrier made wearing visors fashionable.
Since Grandma could barely see, my dad always announced which of her grandchildren was standing before her. Then she would acknowledge each of us in her thin, barely audible voice and welcome us with a hug from her trembling arms.
I think even back then I was already questioning the futility of life when a person's advanced years had drained them of all but their souls. The fact that this is the only way I remember my grandmother, it must have burnt a lasting and frightful brand into my subconscious.
I can still see those bony arms reaching out for me. If the woman had offered me an apple, I would have freaked out.
Grandma Potter
The Pre-Rest Home Years
She looked harmless enough
The dreams didn't last. They had subsided altogether by the time I hit my teen years and had developed a healthy interest in girls, sports, and beer.
But then, life rears up and hits you square in the face -- not with dreams, but with reality.
You watch your own parents get on in years, slip into ill health, and eventually depart from our world. Along the way, aunts and uncles join them until an entire generation is gone.
Now the old folks are no longer feared. They are lovingly missed.
And who does that leave to take their places? My generation, of course.
So I've analyzed all of this and I've come to a conclusion. I've never really been afraid of old people. It's old age that I've been fearing.
I just hope that I can come to grips with it and when I actually am elderly (and that's not too far down the road) life will be more of a dream than a nightmare.
Copyright 2010 Wendel Potter
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