Gray Area: Not the last one standing
Making friends adds new spark late in life
Not everybody lives to be 96, which is why Priscilla Paul had outlived six siblings and every one of her friends by the time she moved into the Park Lane senior apartments. That's the downside of longevity: You're sometimes the last one standing.
Or sitting. The other day Priscilla sat on her sofa talking about her best friend, Marge, who moved into the senior apartments about the same time Priscilla did. Last month Marge was admitted to the rehab wing of a nursing home, and since then Priscilla has been feeling blue. Priscilla and Marge used to go to the dining room together and watch "Oprah" every afternoon. It was Marge who got Priscilla hooked on Barack Obama.
"I miss Marge terribly," Priscilla says. "I've never had a friend as good as Marge."
By the time a person has lived eight or nine decades, she may already have been to the funerals of her spouse, her siblings and her friends, may have moved from her old neighborhood, given up her driver's license and watched her mobility and sight diminish. Sometimes, thinking about all the things and people she has lost, Mabel Gates lies awake in the middle of the night and feels lost herself.
It wasn't that long ago that Mabel, now 89, and her two best friends, Thelma and Lois, were a fun-loving threesome, going out to eat and to the movies. She and Thelma took trips to Oregon and California, and once, in their 70s, they pitched a tent outside Las Vegas because they couldn't get a hotel room. When their vision and health began to fade, the three widows talked on the phone almost every day. Then Thelma died, and last spring, so did Lois.
Recent comments
Leroy, if you go to the Deseret News' home page, www.deseretnews.com,...
For Leroy | Dec. 22, 2008 at 11:15 p.m.
I'd like to commend both authors, Lois Collins and Elaine Jarvik, for...
An old friend | Dec. 22, 2008 at 11:11 p.m.
Wow! What an amazing series of articles! The Deseret News and the...
rvalens2 | Dec. 22, 2008 at 9:59 p.m.
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