Women, alone

First there was my sister who bought a walk-up condo after her divorce a dozen years ago.  The condo was in my hometown, in a pre-war building that used to be apartments.  I can remember when my uncle lived there.  Solid places.  My sister could walk to everything: restaurants, grocery stores, CVS etc.  Several old high school friends still lived in the Village, divorced or widowed, so she had a good Happy Hour group.  A good enough life.

Then the pandemic struck.  My sister became a virtual prisoner in her condo.  Her son-in-law went grocery shopping for her and drove 45 minutes to deliver the groceries to her.  I called her every day, worried about her isolation.  She is better now.  Does her own grocery shopping during Senior Hours.  Has Happy Hours while social distancing in friends' backyards.  Waves at the grand kids from her car.

An old college friend became a widow last fall but was alone during the year her husband was in assisted living with Parkinsons.  She has a large home on a large property.  The area seems semi-rural.  We visited her last year.  It would be a kind of desolate area to live - for me anyway.  I call her periodically.  The kids wanted her to buy into the Continuing Care Community her husband was in.  She said no. She likes her space and her privacy.

Another friend lost her husband abruptly last year.  Her kids all live 2 hours away.  A large house. At one time, her in laws lived across the street, and her BIL and SIL lived nearby.  Now they are all gone.  She seems cheerful but has always been resolute.

My mother lived for twenty odd years after my father died.  She was fortunate since she had her church and bridge groups and a few neighbors to keep tabs on her.  Then slowly dementia took her mind.

End of life decisions are hard.  Where to live.  How to be safe.  We live in a ground floor condo with no steps.  Peaceful and quiet.  Sedate but not 55 plus. Dog friendly.  A little garden behind our lanai which I have cultivated over the years....and a Preserve area we look out at, all green.  I love the view when we get up in the morning.  Perfect, really . However, we really don't know our neighbors, except to wave.   It is more of a transient kind of place and people we knew here in previous years. have moved away. More renters. We have friends in the greater area but not right here.  Maybe there is a perfect solution but I'm not exactly sure what it is. 

We know everyone in our neighborhood up north,  Also we have family up  there.  But we can't take the cold.  No one knows what the future might hold.   Next year maybe I'll investigate options for aging in place here.

My Dog Walker

My dog walker back north is a feisty woman in her 70's with a vague past. For as long as I have known her, she has owned 4 dogs which are her family. When one dog dies, another takes its place.  She has spoken of 3 husbands in her past.  Her family consists of one brother in Arizona. I've know her since before I had Zoey, when my dog Rebe was alive.

Her dogs have always been her life and she does dog training although it is the type of training for performance shows, not regular dogs. She much prefers dogs to people.

Recently I happened to speak with her.  I haven't had much contact in the past year since I'm doing more walking myself, not being lazy about dog walking.

What  happened to her is sad but predictable..  She was walking her dogs  in a heavily wooded spot with high cliffs looming over our creek.  On Google Maps, it is labeled a "Park' but it is a bramble filled no mans land with narrow dirt paths, not tended by any government entity.

My dog walker slipped and fell down the cliff.  On the way down she lost her cell.  It took her 3 hours to drag herself up.  She had injured her hip.  The next day, injured still, she went to Urgent Care and they sent her to the hospital with a broken hip.  She was in the hospital for I think she said 6 weeks....

A neighbor said she would take the dogs to boarding, not the boarding my dog walker uses but one about 20 miles away.  Once there this neighbor came to the hospital and had my dog walker sign away her dogs for adoption.  Two of her dogs are large and the neighbor explained that my dog walker couldn't care for them any more.  That's probably true.  Still, it seems so cruel.  I'm sure parts of this story were skipped over.  The neighbor then had a crew clean up my walkers yard and home, down to the magnets on her refrigerator.  My dog walker was outraged but there must have been more to the story here, anyway.  You just can't clean out someone's yard and home without permission.

Her dogs are gone and she won't see them again. My dog walker said she cried for days.  I feel really awful for her.  Still, she might have seen this coming.  Something like this happened to her in a similar fashion a few years ago when she fell down by the river while walking her dogs,.  In that case, someone was around and helped her up and got her back to her car.

She said she is getting another dog.  A yellow lab puppy from a breeder she has used before.  I tried to talk her into getting an older dog from the county shelter but she wants a dog she can train to use in her classes.

What a Difference a week makes

The death Of George Floyd has stunned the country.  The police committed murder, slow cruel murder.  They are all psychopaths, puffed up with unassailable power.  Sickening.

Beside that, all else palls.  The nation appears to be divided as never before.