The taco joint was mostly empty when we arrived. We went for our weekly 'art brunch' visit, which we'd postponed through the morning until it finally became lunchtime. Each weekend, Benjamin and I sit down and discuss the art we made that week and exchange praise and honest critique. It inspires us to make more art, generates fresh ideas, and helps us identify pitfalls to avoid and areas for improvement.
As we finished placing our order, a frail, old man in a wheelchair came in being pushed by a tall young woman and got in line behind us. We went and took our seats and shortly thereafter they came and sat at the same end of the restaurant just a few tables away.
I didn't try to pay particular attention to them, and yet they kept invading my consciousness. Benjamin would be elaborating on some lovely reflection about the practice of making art, and I would suddenly dissociate and have to fight the urge to cry. I discreetly and internally pondered why the pair down the way from us made me feel so sad. Why I was projecting all of my feelings onto these two people that I knew absolutely nothing about?
After some brief but thoughtful reflection (I was still trying to be part of the art-conversation too all the while and not divert our experience with my sudden arrival of unwieldy feelings, which happens all too often and is hardly fair to my patient partner), I realized it's because of my own hunger for a connection with older generations.
For about 4 years I worked with the elderly, but that was eleven years ago. I loved it. I deeply treasure the times I shared with them at the end of their lives (I worked primarily in hospice care), although those memories grow fainter with each passing year. Since moving up here, I haven't had much intergenerational contact of any kind, not even with people of my parents' generation. Until very recently, my community was made up only of people around my age, give or take 10 years. I hunger for time spent with older generations.
The man quietly ate his food, which I knew he was enjoying because I heard him remark how delicious it was. The young woman, who appeared to be his hired caregiver, didn't eat and mostly killed time on her phone. Occasionally he would say something to her and she would reply. He had trouble hearing her replies and would have to ask her to repeat herself a few times. When it was time to go she attentively helped him clear his space and they headed for the door.
Anything I could say about them would only be speculation. I know nothing of the dynamic of their relationship or their feelings about life in general. But that brief encounter as a bystander several tables away reminded me of several things: First, how lonely I've been for intergenerational community. Second, what a waste it seems (to me, from my place of longing) to have an older person in your life to visit with and learn from and to spend that time on your phone instead. Third, what a missed opportunity to be a real bright spot in an elderly person's day... a segment of the population that is often isolated and has little opportunity for social interaction. Fourth, and most of all, that the ability to comfortably sit with an elderly person and to know how to converse with them when they can't hear, or they mumble, or you feel you have nothing in common is a learned skill, and one that is especially lacking in one's youth.
My mom took us to nursing homes when we were kids and it was awkward and wildly uncomfortable for me. Despite that exposure from a young age, I carried that discomfort into my young-adulthood. I consider myself very fortunate to have developed those skills in a professional context as part of my college education. I don't fault the young woman for her behavior. I saw my younger self in her because I realized that I would have done the exact same thing had I not benefitted from repeated educational and professional opportunities to practice being comfortable in similar situations.
This explained the root of my sadness to me: generalized sadness at an isolated elderly population paired with lack of know-how for the non-elderly (whether youth or upper-middle-aged) to bridge that gap. Everyone misses out all the way around when we don't know how to connect with our elders. It's got me thinking about what I can do on a community level, but it's also got me thinking that I'm way overdue in writing a letter to my grandmother. I'll start with that and work my way forward from there.