“She’s short, has white hair and wears glasses…” Elaine describes the person whose name has slipped her mind. Ah, it’s the description of a token old lady. The white hair narrows it down to about fifty percent of the retirement population, the other being an inky gray. I swallow the urge to laugh, point to the mirror on the wall, and yell, “I found her!” But sometimes I can’t get away with such humor the way they can when joking about ailments and coffins- topics that make for a real hoot. (Once I walked in on a group laughing about confusing sentences to inscribe on their gravestones. “Start digging” one said with such sincere glee). Elaine nods her head and touches my arm, “I’ll think of her name later. Don’t ever get old, dear,” she smiles.
Sometimes working at a retirement home solidifies certain stereotypes I’ve had about old people. They can be forgetful, slow, deaf, and sleepy. When walking across Brooksby Village Drive I sprint, worried that one senior driver will momentarily forget which pedal is break and squish me to death as he cries in shock and embarrassment. “I’m too young!” I’d squeal.” Plus, my coworkers and I joke about the slow walk in the hall. There’s a whole new meaning to hitting traffic once you get stuck behind a walker or wheelchair, whose pace can make you miss hour long meetings.
Where I work there’s a putting green overlooking a gazebo, a meditative walking path around a turtle filled pond, and an area to play your luck at horseshoes. It’s also where the word fall, doesn’t immediately conjure images of yellow autumn leaves or the scent of a pumpkin latte, but instead creates worries of a debilitating blow of gravity. It’s where, if you overhear someone say stroke, you don’t assume they were talking about improving their golf swing or swimming form, but check your email to see if someone you care about has been admitted to the hospital. It’s where memory is not a fond nostalgic image that comforts you, but instead a distinct fear of forgetting.
The context of working in a retirement home changes the priority of definitions. It also makes you remember all the youth that you carry. My ability to jump two stairs and recall a whole grocery list- god bless it.
In 2014, Brooksby Village was at 98 percent occupancy and had about 1,700 elderly residents. In the same year, more than 200 girls were abducted from a school in Nigeria while someone fell asleep on the couch. Lauren Jo was just hired as TV Coordinator at Brooksby Village Television.
And it happened again. Ethel and Doris wrote an entire script for a show called “Neighbor to Neighbor,” an interview based show about residents sharing glorious moments and memories throughout their lives before moving into this retirement community. I am fascinated with these shows about personal histories. If I could tell you all the intimate accounts I’ve heard of WWII. Shrapnel burning the back of a P-40 as fear starts swelling in your lungs; prisoners of war being traded in front of a grainy video camera and then recognizing yourself a year later on a 1940s newsreel; nursing old boys with missing limbs and trying not to cry.
They are living history books showing me stories I’ve only known generalized in massive numbers: 156,000 allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. 127 aircrafts were shot down on D-day alone. Bob missed this invasion because he was sitting in the hospital somewhere in England. And your ancestors were somewhere there too; their hearts were beating and living another day.
There are other stories not memorialized in a major event like war: Carolyn having the courage to leave her husband in 1950 and move to a city as young girl with no job prospects; Maple, an author of children’s books, who always wished she could draw. I worry about where these stories go. If they become whispers in the wind picked up by a muse for later inspirations or if they get buried in the attic with sawdust and tax papers. I wonder if grandchildren or nieces carry these stories. I’m afraid I won’t remember them all.
But it did happened again. The scheduled day for recording Neighbor to Neighbor was August 3rd, 2014, and Doris just never showed up.
In 1912: The RMS titanic, a British Passenger liner, was packed with 2,200 people and sank on tax day. Someone missed the boat because they woke up late. Kim II Sung was born. It was a Monday. Your ancestors were there somewhere too; their hearts were beating another day.
Titanic: An Illustrated History was the first book I took out of the library on my own in 1997. The elementary school I attended put tin carts filled with books in the basement and called it a library. I was thrilled by the glorious pictures of gilded stairwells and oversized chandeliers and very quickly became obsessed with the idea of this gigantic ship. I tried my hardest to read the dense paragraphs about the women and children being guided to the life vessels, but usually just relinquished myself to the images. I stared over an over at the details of the sunken ship preserved under deep waters, and then one day I saw the trailer for the soon to be blockbuster hit with the face of an old woman sharing her story on the big boat.
And then, it registered. These unbelievable, insane, death-defying stories were from real people and not overly heroic characters imagined on the pages of a book. It was an unfortunate revelation that ensued nightmares of sinking docks and water filled shoes for years after. My mother refused to take me to see the movie even though I promised I wouldn’t have any more nightmares or sail on any boats ever. I just wanted to know everyone on that ship, all the souls that sunk into the frozen fog. With resolute energy, I refused to let them rest quietly near the mystery of Atlantis; I dragged them forward and tried to make them speak.
In 2005: The Brooksby Village retirement community opened its doors to seniors 62 and older. Pope John Paul died and youtube.com was launched. Lauren Jo was 15 years old entering her first year of high school, oblivious to every 70 year old except her own grandmother.
You might have been there too. Somewhere on the timeline stretching out into the invisible expanse of “before.” Before other moments on that same timeline showing paths of cause and effect. It’s a way to mark ourselves alongside one another. Where were you when JFK was shot? What year did you graduate high school? It’s a way to know where we are and where we were. I kick dirt with the front of my shoe – a stone to my right reads Mile 14. I dig my fingers around the rock trying to haul it along with me. How many milestones can I carry? Do they get weightier as I go?
Today, I spent 2 hours talking with a resident about her vacation in New York with her grandson, and tomorrow I’ll spend another hour discussing what its like to be one of the only woman working in the white house. “Wow” I’ll say with rote amazement, “I can’t even imagine.” The images of people’s memories hover and meld together. They shuffle around like a deck of cards as I go throughout my day. Phantom visions startle me behind the guises of mundane objects. Unstrung shoelaces bring me to the 1939 NY World’s Fair I hear a young boy cry “I’m lost!” as he trips over everything. White gloves invoke a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt’s large hands pouring tea at an all girls’ college.
These are not characters; these are humans. I try to remember that. To remember it is a privilege to listen and not a task of drudgery stealing my own time from me. It’s in fact their very precious time that they are choosing to spend with me. They want to leave their fingerprints on my skin and camera lenses. They want to build something that will last. I try to remember, but remembering is hard.
What residents remember and share, what they forget, or what begins to sink into the deep fog worries me to no end. I cherish my memories in home videos and old notebooks and in thousands of flip-book images placed in what I always thought to be the safest place – the shelves of my mind. I worry for everyone that they’ll forget what’s most important to them, forget what it felt to be young, forget jumping up two steps – and I’m concerned that this is supposed to happen. I’m unsure if memories are suppose to become transparent like the sky and the details fade into a larger than life picture- into momentous generalized pictures and numbers. Should I try to capture every word and gesture or let their faces sink slowly, slowly over time until it’s lost on the ocean floor?
In 1999: The euro was established. Fear of the millennium was building and someone was dreaming up a retirement home that housed a TV studio. Lauren Jo was on her fourth grade camping trip and Lois lost her husband to cancer.
“I had just retired from my job and my husband passed away.” Lois was staring in the distance behind me trying to grasp at her life from over ten years ago. “Then, I took up painting.” She begins the show with the reason she wanted to produce it. Then, she begin teaching painting techniques on a large Bob Ross canvas as the lights flicker on the wet paint.
John is sitting on a stool behind Camera 1 because his legs can’t hold him for the duration of a 30-minute show, but he is remarkable at framing a shot. Dick is our longest running host and is anxiously waiting for this show to end and start recording his own. He zooms up in an EMV and asks how his hair looks today. Another resident slaps his shoulder and calls him vain. Marie is almost completely blind, but works as a stage manager. She listens to my cues and relays the minutes to the host with giant cards reading 15, 10, 1, WRAP. Charlie likes to do audio, but he doesn’t have the best hearing. I help him monitor the levels and he watches them on the screen while learning what good sound looks like. We have a 24 hour lit channel, with an average of 60 new shows a month, 2 live shows a week, an audience of over 1,000 and this is a typical crew. Well-trained, attentive, and actively creating new content.
The Ethels, Rosemarys, Maries…the Johns, Dicks, and Bobs- they come in and out of the TV studio leaving pieces of their souls hidden in stories. We capture and preserve like museum plaques and poetic memorials. But it isn’t all memories frozen in time or the nostalgia for before. “If we covered ourselves in blankets made only of memories,” Jane said, “we’d be burying ourselves too soon.”
The shows tick through the program schedule and are archived. New shows are created daily. The studio is fixed with new equipment. New residents join the crews. We don’t replace, but build upon the timeline. It shoots straight up into the clouds because it stands on the milestones that came before. And even if you forget the details or can’t untie one memory from another, you can see the whole structure towering above. The only reason things are here now is because there was a before. Perhaps sometimes we need a reminder. We stand on the shoulders of giants, even if we forget what many of the giants’ faces looked like. I like to believe the forgotten details are still there in what remains. I like to believe that life buoys are filled with the breath of titanic voices. I like to believe the missing details in history texts bring readers to muse on these stories. Your heart’s beating to the rhythm of your ancestors and with every beat, you’re honoring a memory with the addition of your own.