written in 2018

In my new-ish retirement community, one of my friends died in mid-April. I called 911 twice (accompanied her to the ER the first time) and called the hospital daily. It was traumatic.

This morning (4-25-18) a memory from 1984 came to mind. This still-vivid experience happened in Shanghai. I was in a street market, passing a chicken stand. No refrigeration, so the meat was kept fresh by not killing the chickens until needed. On the right were dead, plucked chickens hanging in a row by their feet. On the left were live chickens in a cage, and they seemed to be nervously eyeing their slaughtered companions, fully aware of what was next for them.

This is how it is at my retirement community. We all know we’ll die here. It may be next week, or it may take 25 years. It may be from the Independent Living floors, or we may have had to “move downstairs” (to Assisted Living or Skilled Nursing, or to Memory Care). But no matter how long it takes, we all expect to leave here feet first.

And so our life today is like the caged chickens’. We see what happens to our neighbors; we hear rumors and stories (for there is no official way here of sharing about a neighbor’s illness), and we are thankful that it wasn’t us, at least this time.

But deceased neighbors are in our face every day, just like they were for the caged chickens in Shanghai. The ambulance comes almost every day; someone dies at least once a month. We know for whom the bell tolls – it tolls for us, here in the retirement community.

It’s not easy to stay positive in the face of this.