Snippets from The Home:
Life at the retirement home has been an adjustment, to say the least. But I seem to have settled in at record speed, and I’m rather enjoying this final chapter of my life.
One of my favourite pastimes is people-watching, and I can’t imagine a better venue than the retirement home. What a fascinating collection of people! They’ve lived remarkable, productive lives, each carrying a lifetime of stories. And, purely in the interest of research, I have become an accomplished eavesdropper.
Take Victoria, for example. She’s a lovely, impeccably dressed woman in her early nineties. Victoria is quite hard of hearing, so her voice has only two settings: loud and “could someone in the next postal code answer that?”
At least three times a week she settles into her chair in the dining room, surveys the table, and booms, “Have there been any shotgun weddings this week?”
The answer is always the same.
“No.”
“That’s a pity,” she declares. “What a dull place.”
Without missing a beat, she launches into the very same story—word for word—about attending her first wedding when she was four years old. She remembers asking her mother why all the ladies were wearing their nightgowns. It was the first time she’d ever seen women in long formal dresses. She recounts the entire occasion in loving, nostalgic detail.
By this point, the regulars know the routine so well they could probably step in if Victoria needed to catch her breath. More than once, I’ve glanced around the room and caught people silently mouthing the words along with her.
It’s like watching a live performance of a beloved classic.
I’m amazed that Victoria can still recall every detail so vividly. But what stays with me isn’t her remarkable memory—it’s the unmistakable joy on her face each time she tells the story. For a few precious minutes, she’s four years old again, standing in a room full of elegant ladies in nightclothes, seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
Growing older may steal many things, but it can’t take away our happiest memories. And if one treasured story can still make a ninety-something lady smile three times a week, I’d say that’s a gift worth hanging on to.