Forgotten But Not Gone

FTLComm - Melfort - May 7, 2001

All of us in this part of the world have driven by these falling down buildings many times, throughout the year the barn and shed, not seen in these pictures, stand out as they are completely collapsing, but the unusual condition of the trees that surround these houses caught my eye Sunday and these pictures were taken around 8:15 in the evening. The leaves have not come out yet to mask the scene but there is a hint of green that gives us a hint of both what it once was like and what it is now. Aging in a merciless thing, be it with buildings or people, in either case the toll of time goes onward as gravity and decomposition act without regard for what once was.

We have been using this term "moving on" so carelessly in the past year or so. "People have to move on and leave their losses behind them." In the world of the aged, moving on means exactly that, it is not some phrase of a symbolic nature, it means "moving on." Husbands die and the widow gives up some of her self, possessions are passed on to family, sold and the house she shared with him sold and it is time to move on, to an apartment, where in time her health will have her once more shuck off more possessions and go into a lodge where she will keep a few things for her "room". But as time passes she will need more care and will move on. I recall the organisation of Pioneer Lodge in Regina where you might enter the operation with your spouse in a small dwelling, them move on to a single dwelling, then a level one care and with each step the individual moved up the building as the level of care and independence diminished floor by floor by floor. The happiest senior citizens I ever met were a renegade band of individuals who lived in older low cost hotels savouring their independence and caring for themselves one day at a time.