Isaac Bashevis Singer - November 21, 1902 – July 24, 1991
I think I said enough about Singer in my post about him which you can find here.
I noticed in that post that I spoke very little about the story. I did note that I didn’t like the story, but I failed to see it as a teaching tool and just dismissed it. Perhaps I am seeing some sort of evolution in this little experiment I am doing.
I enjoyed this story much more that the previous Singer story. Perhaps the rich descriptions of age and what it does to a human mind drew me into it. Of course, I’m more tuned into anything that has to do with the breakdown of the brain/mind because of what my father is going through and my efforts to keep out of my brain.
I feel though that I have always been attracted to stories of the elderly and especially those stories of elderly men struggling through life alone.
I see myself in this role someday (as I’ve written in other posts) and there really isn’t a need to go any further at this time into that whole stream of thought.
Recently, my family has seen another member of our family start the rapid decline into everything that surrounds old age.
2009 was not a good year for my step-father. I think we can say it was the year that marked his decline.
That year marked the year that his daily routine begin to take shape something like this.
Wake – eat - sleep in chair downstairs – eat – sleep in chair downstairs – eat – sleep in chair downstairs – go upstairs and sleep in bed.
He is 87 years old. He doesn’t really have a choice to live like this. He has declined into this state as a result of his age.
The problem is – is that this has made my mother’s life very difficult and sad.
We don’t think she was ready for such a quick onset – or really, we don’t think she would have ever been ready for something like this.
It hasn’t come to the point yet where we as a collective family unit have had to step in. That I think will come in the next few months.
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