Today was interesting. It was fun, yes, because of the people I got to share the experience with, but it was just an interesting new experience to put in my memory bank. This morning we went to Adult Day Services, housed in a Presbyterian church. We played bingo and helped serve lunch, then played some more bingo. There were a few tables set up in the area, and our group split up to have a few people at each table. I sat next to Miss Mattie, who said hello and welcomed me easily enough but then seemed to be lost in another world. I essentially ended up playing her bingo card for her, trying to point out now and then that we were close to a Bingo or that the other people at the table were doing well.
They had a prize table in the back of the room for when people won, but most of them didn’t seem to care about the prizes and just asked us to pick them something. There were a few people there that were either directors or long-term volunteers, and they would also help select and deliver prizes. But the way they talked to the members struck me as a little demeaning or patronizing, like how one would talk to a child. The members didn’t seem to mind, and it was true that some of them didn’t really understand what was going on even after restating a sentence multiple times. It was just an observation. Maybe this site is specifically for mentally declining members or significantly older members. The oldest man there, Wilbur, was 102. Yet he seemed to be the most lively of all of them! He taught Hannah D. how to play harmonica, and he even stood up and played for a while. He was stomping and swaying to the beat, and I was just incredulous. He only had a few teeth left and he walked pretty slow, but he didn’t use a walker or a cane or anything. My first thought as he was playing was to be afraid that he’d just run out of air and keel over, but then I was just absolutely impressed at how able-bodied this man still was. I’ve concluded that if I do end up living for a very long time, I’d like to be as full of life as Wilbur and the people we met at Bordeaux yesterday. But if I ever become incoherent or have to be talked at like a child, I’d rather just die young. That may sound morbid, but it really isn’t. I take it more of as a warning to take care of my body and my mind. If you think about the things you marvel at in museums, or historical buildings, and the care it took preserve those things, the same applies to us. Wilbur was born around 1910. In a way, this man is a piece of history! And so are all of us.
Once we finished bingo and serving lunch, it started to flurry and they hurried everyone home. To our Kansas group, it seemed a little too frantic for just a flurry of snow. But I guess it’s different for older people, since icy weather means a potential fall, and a broken hip can really immobilize you. Anyway, we left earlier than planned but no one complained since bingo was kind of boring. We’ll be there tomorrow morning again…I don’t think anyone in the group is excited to come back to such a lifeless place, but it is a good experience just to see what it’s like. We were supposed to go help with the Living at Home sector of the program this afternoon, but that got cancelled. So now we’re just going to hang out and bond some more, which is fine with me!
-Hannah S.
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