‘The importance of keeping older people engaged during coronavirus self-isolation’

One of the benefits of our present situation is the fact that we have been presented with an almost perfect time to dream. Despite what all those young, sub-60-year-old’s think, we old-timers are a pretty busy lot; we may not go scrambling up the sides of mountains any longer, and it’s many years since I thought about jumping out of a plane with a bag-full of thin silk strapped to my back, but we do still manage to occupy our minds and our bodies to a very considerable extent.

Some of us write, others paint and quite a few do wonderful things in their gardens and the less physically ambitious indulge in such activities as knitting and quilt making. On top of that, there is still the happy home to look after, no matter whether it’s a small unit or an inherited mansion, these places need a lot of work to make certain that they not only look nice, but they also stay standing up as they should!

The problem is — in my case anyway — I am not as quick as I used to be. Where I used to cut the grass around our place (about a quarter of an acre), in a couple of hours, using an ordinary, hand-pushed motor mower, it now takes me four days, seeing to a dedicated portion on each day. Because of a ‘gammy’ leg I can no longer scoot up our six-foot step ladder to change light bulbs or put new batteries in the smoke alarms, but I can still push the vacuum-cleaner around the place and I’m a dab-hand at washing dishes!

The point I’m making is that we still, despite what some others may think, put a full day of ‘life’ into our existence, even when we get beyond 60, and what has happened recently has done nothing to lessen our capabilities, nor has it reduced the number of things that still need doing on a daily basis, however many viruses there are, trying to destroy us and most of the things around us. In fact if anything, our responsibilities have increased; we now have our continued health to worry about, as well as the day-to-day problems.

The vital thing is, we have been trapped in our own homes, so a lot of the things that took so much of our time before are now excluded from us, like Friday nights at the local with friends, shopping in the nearby bigger town, squandering $20 on the pokies or a friendly game of cards at the Country Club. We can no longer enjoy a quiet evening in a restaurant, or $10-worth of movies at the cinema either — but …

The net result of all this is that we have been given a lot of spare time, time we can either waste by watching endless hours of pretty useless TV, or in bed eating chocolates — or we can take full advantage of the situation and think of all the opportunities available to us.

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