Really struggling at 15 months out with losing my husband

[moniss]

13. I wanted to share with you something I wrote

about an experience I had 3 years ago. I hope it helps or gives you a chance to smile. I titled it "Young and Old". It sort of hinged around what was happening before 2020 and some insight that came to me. I'm a kid from the early years after WW2 and I see more and more every day that we are all young and old at the same time. Old for the things that make us hurt and weary and young for the new things facing us as our lives change.

"Young and Old"

Good morning everyone. I hope all is well. Overcast and cold here as we draw close to Memorial Day. Yesterday I was at the grocery store and I was struck by something that made me think of this generational thing in politics here in America. As people we sometimes go various directions in our lives without being aware that some of it is natural, part of the flow and necessary. I live in a community that is older with older people than average. I did not choose this because of that although I'm sure some do. I arrived years ago because I found an affordable apartment in a small building nestled in a wooded area along Lake Michigan. It was very nice and quiet. Things have changed little in 25 years as I dug in to my work with only a few detours. We have one grocery store in the town and it was there that I found myself the other day doing my normal stroll through the aisles with my cart when I came upon a lady somewhere in her late 50's or early 60's in the aisle with baking products like flour, canned frosting and cake mix. She was by herself and as I approached she was turned and facing the shelf. I got closer to her position and I realized she was talking to the products on the shelf. Something to the effect of "now if I take you and you then I can.....". It was at that point that I had a moment of clarity about this generational thing. America now has become "neighborhoods", and sometimes whole towns, where the younger voters and the older voters don't necessarily "mingle" as much. We have specialized low rent housing just for the elderly. Certainly a wonderful thing but it also tends to aggregate people in areas away from the others in society. So the views, hopes, accepted practices and day to day struggles of one group aren't anywhere near as much a part of life for the other group as they used to be. It wasn't intended to be this way most likely but it undeniably has happened. So I stopped for a moment and I asked the lady if she needed help with reaching anything. She smiled at me and said no. I took a step forward to keep going when she said to me "I used to shop with my husband and he would take things off the shelf as we talked about what to buy and what we would make." She laughed a little and said it was a habit for her to talk away to the shelves even though her husband had passed away a year ago. I smiled back and told her that it's OK until the products answer you back. She liked the humor and I pushed on through the aisle. I realized that the experience I just had was one that most people under 35 or so are not going to encounter very often if at all. So it is with our society and politics now. We see a very old Biden and Sanders and some very young folks like Kamala, Beto and Pete etc. Which way do we go now that we have to choose? Would it be easier for each generation to be more in tune and comfortable with each other if we spent more time in general mingling a bit with each other? But we haven't and the media does not help us communicate with each other but rather it communicates to us individually in the compartmentalized groups they've determined for us. A younger person seeing the lady in the aisle talking to the products on the shelves would likely see perhaps someone with signs of early dementia because that is maybe what they saw in a media piece. But what I saw was a lady shopping with her husband even though it was just an echo. She didn't need any help from the kind stranger who stopped. She only needed to go on with the echo fading as she determines. Or not at all if she likes.