Well here I am at 75 years of age. It is a beautiful sunny day and already 11 degrees celsius. I am 3/4ths of a century old. I am still young with respect to the ages of my parents - my father reached 94 years 4 months and my mother reached 85 years and three months.
Remembering my mother at 75 years she was on her own as my father was in a nursing home but soon my youngest brother would move in with her and she would have her two grand daughters (my brother's children) with her. Glancing at her letters in this time period she was busy with her life and in relatively good health. She had slowed down with her gardening somewhat and took regular walks instead to keep fit. She loved to do Yoga. I never could acquire her dedication to Yoga as I prefer more cardiovascular exercises like running and aerobics. I did do Yoga when my eldest child was young but we moved quickly to more aerobic type exercises.
Remembering my father at 75 years he was still working. He had retired in his late 60s but that apparently didn't last long. I was already married by then and we didn't have a car the first year and then when we did we were out and about not coming home very regularly so dependent on what I was hearing. But by 75 he was back at work once again and he did work into his 80s until he had a stroke at 88. I used to sit with him at the Nursing Home for the day when we went back and my husband and daughters spent the day with my mother. He always knew me after I had been there a while but he had lost a lot of himself with the stroke. He was no longer mobile which was hard for him as he had always been an active walker.
Remembering my grandmother at 75 she still seemed relatively young to my mind; I was sixteen and spent a lot of Saturdays with her. She was not as active as she had been when I was younger but she still kept up her garden and we used to walk around the area and deliver flyers for my uncle's store. We also walked to the local shopping area perhaps half of a mile away and back to pick up sundry items that my uncle did not carry. When I was 16 she did talk more about my grandfather than she had when I was younger. She loved him very much I would have said and he helped her to learn some of the school work she had missed because her mother died when she was eleven and she had to stay home and look after her younger siblings. A stroke when she was 80 would carry her away but the signs of that were perhaps there. The diet of people at that time was a higher cholesterol than we eat now.
Remembering my grandfather at 75 he still seemed quite active as he gardened our whole back yard. I was just five years of age and the memory is not quite as strong as for my grandmother. My one clear memory was his lying on the grass and looking up at the clouds and saying that the clouds that were passing over us now would go on to England and pass over Upper Clatford where he was born. He talked a lot about Upper Clatford and when I finally got there it seemed very like what he had said with the creek just before the Church. The heavy wooden door (protected now by a glassed in porch) was exactly as he described it. The Church with the very large porch behind the sacristy where he first went to school. He loved to talk about his siblings and Upper Clatford and his mother to whom he was quite devoted I think. Sometimes he would talk about my grandmother and how he used to walk from Upper Clatford to Kimpton to see her. We did not make that walk whilst we were there but the car ride is just under four miles and he would likely have gone across the right of way saving him a little length. He too had a stroke when he was 79 and did not live long after that. But again cholesterol predominated the diet and although he did love to walk; less cholesterol would have been better I am sure.
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