"Bailout?"

At this time of year, I'm tempted to take the month of December off, (but of course I won't, but I am tempted). From now until December 24th or so, our nursing homes will be filled with singers, dancers, musicians, great desserts, and all sorts of activities. The nursing home residents will enjoy tidal waves of volunteers and visitors from all corners of our society from the early morning hours continuing late into the evening.

By December 24th, most of the nursing home residents will have all six verses of "The First Noel" memorized, they will be able to recite the story of "Silent Night," without giving it a second thought, and their blood sugars will have reached new highs.

Now don't get me wrong, all of this activity is great, really great in fact. I'm glad people are out visiting the nursing homes, and like me, some of them may end up working in the field of gerontology, starting their own volunteer organizations, and so on. But, most of them probably will not. My chore these days is to get them to come back in January, when the nursing homes will be like ghost towns.

Feeling alone is painful, and it has been proven to be bad for your health. Only half of nursing home residents get visitors from anyone, and that is probably a conservative estimate. One resident told me, "I have a lot of staff around me, but there is no one here just for me." Staff do not have time to sit down and visit with residents. Care staff hit the ground running at the beginning of their shift continuing to run right through lunch right up to the end of their shift: bathing, grooming, bathrooming, giving meds, and so on.

In the midst of all the staff flurry, the nursing home resident ends up sitting alone, and eventually they shut down, (die, failure to thrive). Incident rates of Alzheimers's disease, and clincal depression are linked to loneliness. Loneliness kills people. All sorts of people have their handouts these day, bail outs they call them. The nursing home residents need a bailout too, except their bailout is not measured in dollars and cents, it's measured in time spent with a "friend." The nursing home resident that gets visitors gets better care.

This year, I'm asking for a bail out too. I'm asking Santa to bring us more volunteers this year for Christmas, and I'm asking him to see what he can do about getting them to come back in January too.

"Hey, it's my month!"

May is "Older American's Month." I guess now that I am 54 years old, that makes me an older American or maybe I have to wait to turn 65. I'm not actually sure. Maybe it's the people who are turning 70 this year, maybe May is their month. Of course, if you are only in the third grade this year, maybe it's the sixth graders, maybe they are the older Americans. Then there are the college students and to a third grader they are really old.

Wait! I know who the older people are. They are the graduate students in the gerontology department at college. They are really-really old.

Ok, enough. The number associated with our age is so misleading. After all it's just a number. Pick a number, any number. How about 40. What does that tell you? Well for sure, it means that this person has been on the earth long enough to have circumnavigated the sun 40 times. I think that is the only fact, that I can tell you about that person. The rest would probably be conjecture based on a stereotype of what I think a 40 year-old person might be.

How about 75? When I say I know someone who is 75, what do you think? What do you imagine? Is it someone with wrinkly skin, barely standing under their own weight? Is it someone running a marathon? It's just a number.

The face of aging is changing and will continue to change over the next three decades or so. Person's of the Baby Boom generation will change it. People at 60 will be starting new careers. 75 year olds will be climbing mountains, writing novels, and a whole host of other activities.

Finally, from God's perspective there isn't really that much difference between 9 and 90. Afterall, how old is God? The real age of a person isn't measured in years, so much as it is measured in attitude. I know 30 year-olds who act like their 106, and I know a 106 year old who is going on 30.

So, May is "Older American's Month." Who are these older American's? It looks like maybe it's not just for me, maybe it's for us - all of us, 9 or 90.