I have had a few thoughts today that I thought I would munch on.
First was a comment that my coworker said to me while we were discussing James Earl Jones and his 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award winning, as chronicled in the Screen Actor Magazine. In the article, there are many pictures of Ole’ Low-Voice himself from his many films, etc. I made the comment that he looked a lot darker when he was younger compared to now. My coworker said (jokingly) that he was fading as he was getting older. I found that thought funny and poignant. At first I thought of it as the curse that you get for not wrinkling. You see, my mom is of the thought that African American men and women don’t get wrinkles as they get older, but us white folk do. So when my coworker said what she said, my immediate response (thought) was, “That’s for not wrinkling.”
But as I thought more on the subject, I came to think that it might be more a fact. And again, as I work, I don’t research anything, I just like to make my own assumptions. But it actually made sense to me that he would fade, not like a picture though, but purely based on science. Our bodies are limited production houses. We have only so many heartbeats, so many strands of hair, so many eggs and sperm, so why not consider that we have only so much melatonin? As JEJ gets older, his body produces less melatonin, which would make his skin lighter in appearance. This could be a scientific fact, but like I said, I am not going to risk actually finding out the truth.
Then I started to think of people as a picture or a newspaper; as they get older they begin to break down, and fade. Leave a soda can out in the sun and all the color will be removed from it. So as we get older we become harder to see. (Ha, an eyesight joke! Works on two levels, three if you know me well enough!) And the fading made me think about how we as a society have pushed our elders away, putting them in homes, and assisted living communities, etc, essentially fading them from our own lives, because for whatever reason, we can’t be bothered to take care of “our own messes.” Better to pass the buck, literally, and pay some stranger to take care of our parents so we don’t have to think about them. I can understand why people would do that, but at the same time, we need to honor our parents, IF they deserve that honor. Now, I have some very good friends whose parents I think should definitely be put in a home, so that my friends would never have to think about them again, but far too many people use these assisted living places as an excuse to just abandon their parents.
And who can blame them though? We live in a disposable society, where children are dropped off by their parents at day care centers, and where they spend half of there awake day with a “foster” parent, not necessarily learning anything, just remaining alive. And even when the parents have a day off, they still drop their kids off at the day care center, so they can spend a day without them. Why should it be any different when our parents and grandparents enter their “second childhood?”
All I know is that I have made up my mind and made this known to my parents, that when they get to the point where they can not live on their own any longer, they will come and live with me (and my family, if I ever have one). I refuse to let them fade out of the picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment