© Copyright 2000 by James David Pearce

Clem is sitting there, thinking and reflecting, as old folks do.

At 76, he is beginning to feel like a genuine senior citizen, and he thinks he has a right to do so. He's reached a point where he has grandchildren who have children of their own attending public school, but he can't shake the feeling that something isn't right with his personal aging process.

The thought is occurring to him that his unease about his old age might be related to the fact that his mother-in-law Christine is 99 and showing no signs of slowing.

Christine lives alone in a small town 130 miles east of Clem and his wife, her most nearby relatives.   Christine's only other "child," a son, 78, lives in a very large town 600 miles away.   Her only living sibling, a sister, in her 80s, lives with her 90-plus-year-old husband in a small town 300 miles away, in the mountains at the other end of the state.

Christine always says that if she dies before her relatives do, she doesn't want them to let anyone put her age in the newspaper obituary. She threatens dire vengeance if anyone tells her age while she's alive, because, she says, she doesn't want people to think she's old. (Clem never really promised to keep the secret.)

She ignores the doctor's instructions to use a walking-cane to guard against a broken bone, and instead walks around the grocery stores leaning on a shopping cart to get her exercise.

Christine buried two husbands, takes no medicine, does her own shopping, keeps a seven-room house without help, and has a valid driver's license.

She drives two blocks to the senior citizens' center for lunch, to the doctor's office two blocks away every three or four months for a checkup, to a small beauty shop (a half-mile over) when she feels her hair needs fixing, and to a fast-food restaurant when she wants a sandwich and coffee and to find someone with whom she can swap old folks' complaints.

Sometimes she rides around to neighboring towns to visit her younger acquaintances living in various nursing homes.

She is an extraordinary woman ~ with good eyesight and a keen interest in the television news and weather and the op-ed page of the newspaper.

She is a little too frail to mow her lawn, but she's not too frail to act as a stern overseer to any youngster she can hire to tend that task.

She is highly opinionated, very outspoken, and very hard of hearing. This tends to make a conversation with her a heavily one-sided affair for anyone who tries to engage, such as Clem, especially since he doesn't hear so well himself.

The situation for some time has left Clem and his wife feeling that Christine really shouldn't be living alone, and they feel sort of guilty that they don't do more for her even though they have tried to drive the 260 miles there and back at least once a month ~ sometimes twice ~ for the past 53 years.

From where Clem lives, that's a minimum of 1250 times through Rocky Mount, which he and his wife have watched grow from a small railroad town to a booming auto-choked city, while just passing through it over the years. Because of its location, you can't get from Clem's to Christine's and back without going by Rocky Mount twice, and it makes a convenient pit-stop.

As Clem, his wife, their old car and its tires began to show more and more signs of wear, they decided it would be a good idea to ask Christine to give up housekeeping and come live with them. They offered her a room of her own.

She wouldn't hear of it. She'd visit occasionally, but wouldn't come to stay.

They suggested she hire a housekeeper. No, sir. Nobody could clean up to suit Christine.

They took her around to two or three assisted-living homes, and checked on prices. No deal. Too expensive.

That last once prompted Clem to press Christine on her finances. Because she occasionally asked his wife to sign a CD turnover, he knew she had a little money in the bank. He thought he'd try to convince her to use it to go to an assisted-living home.

"Christine," he said, loudly, "I want to know something. How much money do you have?"

"Well, a little," she said.

"Christine," he said, even louder, "I really want to know how much you have in CDs."

"Well," she repeated, "a little. But that money's for Walter (her son) and Thelma (her daughter). I can't spend that on myself. I'm keeping that for them."

Clem was really exasperated. "Christine," he said, "how much?"

She told him. He was surprised, but recovered quickly.

"Christine," he practically yelled at her, "We'd all rather you take that money and spend it on yourself for something like an assisted-living home."

"Well," Christine said quietly. "I might think about it."

"Look," Clem said. "That money would keep you in a retirement home for four years! Four years! Then, you can sell your house and you'll get enough from that to keep you another four years! Think about it!"

"Well," said Christine. "But if I do that, and spend all that money, what then? What will I do then? When I'm broke, what then?"

Since Clem calculated they were only talking about eight years ~ after which Christine would be only 107 ~ he decided he had to concede her point.

"Christine," he said, "I don't know. I really don't know."

~~~
Thelma Christine Leonhirth
a long time ago