Legacy
Legacy.
Seems to always be the themes of graduations, don't you think? But what if instead of just sitting there thinking 'yeah, I won't be making a huge impact but maybe that valedictorian up there may', we stop.
I have been all about stopping for the past few weeks- just taking a moment to really think about what is going through my head, to look at what is really going on around me, to look at the people I am interacting with, how they impact me, the situations that engrave themselves into my subconscious mind to be pulled up in my later future to remind me of either hurt or important elevated feeling...
The elderly in this 'mixed cultured', first worlded economic safe-haven that we call Canada are being jipped. That's right, you heard me. Screwed. Deceived. Ripped off. Bamboozled.
It may just be the current geriatric nurse in me (go current clinical!) but I see how these people are thinking, how slowly they move and I can't help but wonder why they aren't sharing their phenomenal life-stories with nurses, other patients and students around them. Most of the individuals on my placement unit have been through at least one war, have had countless atrocities happen to both them and their families, yet they follow in line and take the ceaseless derogatory assumptions and comments that we as younger generations throw at them.
And they're so cool. You could write novels about these people's lives and many would think it's fiction because of the outrageous things that happened to them over the decades, establishing and creating unique individuals who would grow more and more hardy as the days would go by.
She was ninety-something when she died. I didn't even know the woman, only recognized her name from passing conversation; and I find myself, two days after her funeral at a memorial service of sorts (only about 20 minutes of this memorial also), sitting remarkably near the front, finding myself lost in the last few years of her life. Her association with the elderly in this society.
She saw the world not as the failure that it was, but at the disaster that it is and the potential it had to become something great. She saw the pain that it had endured and the annoyance in life that it would continue to endure if it did not straighten it's hat and tighten the scarf about it's neck.
I had no idea who this woman was. But from those brief 20 minutes, I was taken aback by the absolute magnitude of the walk that this woman had with her father. She had not just walked even, she had traversed distances I am sure from here to the moon in her relationship with Him and as I left I kept going, Wow; now that is something I want.
To have a stranger sit in on a memory session and come away in awe of her passion for Jesus without knowing who she was, what she looked like or even what kind of tissue brand she used- but to be struck over the head by her legacy and not really know how.
She was old, yes. She was part of a population that many consider a burden, but she was vivacious. She sounded like she was spunky and vibrant and so passionate that she would invoke fire within others. She was part of the elderly society, the one that people think is a frustrating to deal with because of their health issues, their taxing needs upon the economy and the ceaseless banter that they strike up about old lace and pipe tobacco. But as one of the elderly, she too had a story. She too had a walk.
And I want what she had.
Seems to always be the themes of graduations, don't you think? But what if instead of just sitting there thinking 'yeah, I won't be making a huge impact but maybe that valedictorian up there may', we stop.
I have been all about stopping for the past few weeks- just taking a moment to really think about what is going through my head, to look at what is really going on around me, to look at the people I am interacting with, how they impact me, the situations that engrave themselves into my subconscious mind to be pulled up in my later future to remind me of either hurt or important elevated feeling...
The elderly in this 'mixed cultured', first worlded economic safe-haven that we call Canada are being jipped. That's right, you heard me. Screwed. Deceived. Ripped off. Bamboozled.
It may just be the current geriatric nurse in me (go current clinical!) but I see how these people are thinking, how slowly they move and I can't help but wonder why they aren't sharing their phenomenal life-stories with nurses, other patients and students around them. Most of the individuals on my placement unit have been through at least one war, have had countless atrocities happen to both them and their families, yet they follow in line and take the ceaseless derogatory assumptions and comments that we as younger generations throw at them.
And they're so cool. You could write novels about these people's lives and many would think it's fiction because of the outrageous things that happened to them over the decades, establishing and creating unique individuals who would grow more and more hardy as the days would go by.
She was ninety-something when she died. I didn't even know the woman, only recognized her name from passing conversation; and I find myself, two days after her funeral at a memorial service of sorts (only about 20 minutes of this memorial also), sitting remarkably near the front, finding myself lost in the last few years of her life. Her association with the elderly in this society.
She saw the world not as the failure that it was, but at the disaster that it is and the potential it had to become something great. She saw the pain that it had endured and the annoyance in life that it would continue to endure if it did not straighten it's hat and tighten the scarf about it's neck.
I had no idea who this woman was. But from those brief 20 minutes, I was taken aback by the absolute magnitude of the walk that this woman had with her father. She had not just walked even, she had traversed distances I am sure from here to the moon in her relationship with Him and as I left I kept going, Wow; now that is something I want.
To have a stranger sit in on a memory session and come away in awe of her passion for Jesus without knowing who she was, what she looked like or even what kind of tissue brand she used- but to be struck over the head by her legacy and not really know how.
She was old, yes. She was part of a population that many consider a burden, but she was vivacious. She sounded like she was spunky and vibrant and so passionate that she would invoke fire within others. She was part of the elderly society, the one that people think is a frustrating to deal with because of their health issues, their taxing needs upon the economy and the ceaseless banter that they strike up about old lace and pipe tobacco. But as one of the elderly, she too had a story. She too had a walk.
And I want what she had.
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank-you for the feedback!