One day, at the age of 15, my half-brother scored 92 runs for South Moor Cricket Club's first team. I thought that was a big score for his age and told him that I was delighted for him. 92 runs are a lot of runs but I am equally impressed if you have lived that amount of years on this tiny blue dot in the universe.
It is the way of life that Colin, being 15, had his best years ahead of him, unlike the 92 year old who has not. An aged person is likely to experience pain, despair and loneliness in generous measure, however caring and considerate his or her family happen to be. Ushaw Moor residents in the first half of the 20th century were lucky to reach 65, never mind 92. In the 1930s a common age for men to die was 57; by the time they had reached that milestone they tended to be tired but not necessarily dispirited. And not necessarily lonely. You still had a community that cared rather than finding yourself being administered to by well meaning officials.
Community was all, in Ushaw Moor: however old you were there was a good chance of being visited by family, work colleagues and neighbours that cared. Your heart might have been on the verge of stopping, or your lungs may have felt like a disobedient dog, but you had human warmth around you and in you.
There is still a lot of human warmth about but too much of it is miles away and distracted by other things. These days, if you are one of the unlucky ones, you can be left with a birthday card, a Christmas card and your memories. As well as pain and energy loss.
The very old have a lot to give, especially if you ignore a few concepts held by that'outdated' generation, but are alert to their perceptive and very wise comments.It demands patience, listening skills and love. Lots of love. We really are all on a journey with a terminus and should realise that virtually all of us will be dead by the time we are 110. Out caught in the slips by an away swinging ball.
WB
Great read Wilf, and some very wise words, "patience, listening skills and love"; a lesson to us all :)
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written Wilf. A lot of years ago I did A Level Sociology at Hebburn Tech.. (and passed).. One visiting lecturer from Spennymoor gave us his vision of the future and it has come trueto a certain extent. Large numbers of men were working in labour intensive industries like coal mining, factories and shipyards. Men working alongside each other usually lived close to each other. Their wives and childrern were friends and the parents might go for a night together on a Friday or Saturday night. This all formed a strong communal bond. With the demise of industry this has all disappeared and left the communities weaker. This the lectureer forecast. He also stated that 24 hour television would keep people in their own homes instead of sociallising at the pub or club. This has come true also. He also stated that people living in the same street would not know their neighbours as people would travel some distance to work and they would not have time for socialising. To a certain extent I suppose this has come true and he stated the title of a song that had been popular a short time previously (Little Boxes, Little Boxes) where a family would live independently of his neighbour in houses of a same design and the house or home would be isolated from every other house. Is this coming true? A lot of people today know more and are more interested in what happens on Coronation Street than in their own street.
ReplyDeleteBrian Mc