Living Long

Today, I drove to Flossmoor, Illinois, which is a beautiful old place. The houses have huge front yards with so many old trees. And the leaves are just changing colors and falling, and today the day wasn't as cold as it has been. Driving in was a total stress reliever.

I went to see a woman, Helen, who's eighty-three years old. Talked to her about her schooling. She graduated in 1939. I was thinking of limiting my questions to her school strictly. But she didn't remember too much about it. Realized soon that I didn't need to ask anything, she was so eager to share. I recorded a lot of the conversation and she gave me her yearbooks and report cards to use for my presentation.

When I was leaving (and I was leaving at least four different times before I actually left) she smiled so wholeheartedly, and told me how nice it was for me to talk to her. She was the one doing me a favor. She really needs visitors. Her daughter who looked older than my mother lives with her now. But she's usually home. She kept talking about everyone who had died and how there was no one left. I need to find excuses to visit her regularly. Tomorrow I'll return the stuff and then maybe I can go again with further questions. Just before I left she said she wanted to show me pictures, and she showed me her granddaughter and her husband's (now deceased) and then she shoed me one of her family's taken in 1940 with about twenty people. "It's so sad," she said, "they're all dead now." I didn't know what to say except that it was a long time ago.

At the door, I told her about how beautiful the neighborhood was. She agreed but talked about how "everyone's gone." In the fifty years she's been there, every single old neighbor has moved away.