Century Club

Why do all of these people have to be here today? For that matter, who are most of these strangers?

Why does everyone have to fuss about my birthday … after all, I’m just 100 today.

I have nurses coming in my room at all hours of the day. My food looks like that of a two year old child. I can’t do anything without at least two persons barking orders at me to “do this” and “do that.” What is SO great about being 100 years old, that all of these people need to be here taking pictures with me all day long? Why couldn’t they have done that a decade earlier when I had all my teeth and my skin didn’t look like that of an elephant?

So what if I was born right as the United States was about to enter the worst time it had ever endured as a leading democratic nation, or the fact that I have been alive during 18 different President’s terms, or I rode to school in a horse drawn carriage. I worked on the family farm for over 30 years. History is relative. Today, people bitch and moan over the smallest things, they couldn’t have survived in the conditions that I knew as a young adult.

I’ve lived through too much. I’ve buried my parents, all my siblings, my husband, too many friends to count, two children, and a grandchild. I’ve affected as many lives as I could when I had the ability to do so. I’ve seen the economic conditions in the world change more times than Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding attire. So why is being 100 years old any different from any other birthday? It’s actually depressing to think about.

“God, what can I still do to make a difference? What purpose do you still have for me here on this earth? What can I do…in this body, that you would still have me here?”

Surrounded by three generations of MY family I think, “Thank you for the blessing of family. God I love them, but why am I still here?”

I need a cigarette!

Silence is Golden

Oh my gosh [I think my granddaughter says this by writing OMG. It is amazing kids that kids know to talk anymore]! Anyways, I have had the worse trouble sleeping the last couple of nights. It appears that my roommate thinks she’s a baby again, because she is constantly crying for her mother in the early hours of the morning to take her to see nana's horses. Good Lord, is this how we are supposed to "age gracefully?" If so, then please take me now.

The nurses have explained to me that my roommate has dementia and that her condition will progressively get worse. In having a conversation with her daughter, the physician has prescribed something to address this change that she has recently experienced. In addition he has also provided something to help her sleep at night. For that I am very elated; however, what about me? The doctor needs to prescribe something to help me sleep, because I’m about to go stark raving mad if I don't get decent rest.

When addressing my concern to one of the administrative staff members, they mentioned to me that since I am levying the complaint regarding my roommates late hour, maternal chanting, I will have to be the one to move to another room. How is that fair? I’ve been living in this room for three years, eight months and six days. Now, because I have been a good person, followed all the rules, and never had any problems, I have to move?

If only I had terrible hearing that required hearing aids that I could take out at night, so I couldn’t hear my own breathing. Ugh, it doesn’t pay to be this old and healthy!