It’s
Not Age: It’s Attitude and Ability
Dedication:
To
Gwen,
Roy, George, Avenel, Carson, Lois.
And
To
Salliann,
Ron, Eli, Yvonne, Iris, Michael, and Matthew who, sadly, never made it halfway
to their life’s potential. To Ruth, and Syd who made it to their seventies.
I
was eighteen and in my last year of high school when Canada’s Centennial
celebrations were held in Montreal in 1967. I put down a deposit of $10.00 to
book a place on a school-sponsored trip to those festivities. Then my boyfriend
asked me to marry him and I said yes. I cancelled my trip and began my wedding
plans. The marriage lasted eight years.
Since then I have joked that I have to
live to 120 years-of-age so I could go to Canada’s Bicentennial celebrations. I
would be 118 in 2067 so I figured that by living to 120, I would have a couple
of years to remember and talk about my experience.
Then, in 2017, Canada celebrated its 150th
birthday and I turned 68 years-of-age. I was surprised that fifty years had
already passed since I first made that statement. I realized that I was half
way to Canada’s bicentennial.
Although it started out as a joke I have
learned that it is not an unrealistic quest, that I could conceivably live to
120 years-of-age. Every year thousands of people around the world are reaching
their 100th birthdays and becoming centenarians; many are even becoming super
centenarians by turning 110. Some are reaching 115 and 117 and 119 years of
age. One woman has actually lived to 122 years, 164 days.
If she could do it then why couldn’t
others. Why couldn’t I? I could think of no reason why I couldn’t so I decided
to give it a try, to work at living to 120 years of age or longer.
Too bad, though, that for those first
fifty years I didn’t look after my body, and therefore my health, as well as I
should have.
Part One
My Life Before Cancer
Chapter 1 My Childhood
I
was born in New Westminster, B.C., Canada, part of the first wave of the Baby
Boomer generation. When I was two-years-old my parents moved to a farm near
Edmonton, Alberta, and a couple of years later into the city of Edmonton. Mine
was a normal childhood for the time, which meant nutritious food and plenty of
outdoor activity.
The house we lived in was small but the
back yard was large. There were rows of raspberries and strawberries dividing
it into a lawn and a garden spot. Every summer, Mom put in a huge garden. We
had fresh berries when they were ripe, vegetables when they were ready, and she
canned dozens of jars for over the winter. She also canned pears and peaches,
which she bought from the store. There were always oranges, apples, and milk
for snacks in the refrigerator. Mom also made homemade white bread.
Every morning we had hot oatmeal for
breakfast. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I was allowed to have cold
packaged cereal on the weekends although my parents still ate their porridge.
My siblings and I came home from school for lunch which was usually soup or
salmon sandwiches or macaroni. For our suppers we ate the left over roast beef
and trimmings from our Sunday meal, or canned beans and bread, scrambled eggs
and toast, or pancakes and natural peanut butter. This was before the
manufacturers added hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, and sugar to the peanut
butter to insure a longer shelf life, so there was always oil on the top when
we opened the lid. My dad used a butter knife to blend the oil back into the
mixture before we ate it.
All our meals were homemade. We never
went to restaurants and there weren’t packaged or prepared frozen meals on the
market. We couldn’t afford any junk food or fast food that might have been
available at the time. We never had chocolate bars or candy in the house except
on Halloween. On that night I tried to stay out as long as possible to get as
many goodies as I could. I ate everything else in my bag except the hard candy
which usually lasted until Christmas because I didn’t really like it.
The only down side by today’s standards
was that we ate strictly white bread, first home made and then later store
bought, and margarine.
Even at an early age I loved food and
was a big eater. I would eat the lunch my mother prepared, then hurry over to
my girlfriend’s house and have lunch with her and her parents. Her mother made
the best chicken noodle soup.
During grades three, four, and five,
each spring all the children in the school I attended were given a three-month supply
of cod liver oil capsules to take. I still remember how terrible they tasted. I
used to drop the capsule in my hot porridge and stir it around so that I didn’t
know which mouthful I would be eating it.
I had the usual childhood diseases, such
as chicken pox, measles, and mumps and none of them were very serious. I never
broke a bone nor had any serious accidents. I do remember going to visit the
doctor for boils that I would get under my arms. One time he decided to lance
one without giving me any painkiller or freezing it first. Even now I can feel
the knife slicing through the skin and him squeezing the pus out. I was given a
lotion to put on them and as I grew older they disappeared.
I was a child before television and I
basically lived outside with my friends. We played games, rode our bikes,
skated in the winter, walked to school. At school we had recess, physical
education, and track meets to train for. I had a very active childhood. I also
got my first job at age ten.
A woman in the neighbourhood made
corsages and she hired some of us children sell them a week before Mother’s
Day. She would give each of us a box containing about eight corsages of
different colours and we would go to separate streets.
At each house I climbed the front stairs
and knocked on the door. When it was opened I showed the different corsages and
explained who had made and how much they were worth. If a man answered, he
usually bought one for his wife. If a woman answered, it was a much tougher sell.
But I made enough money to buy my mother a bouquet of artificial flowers for
Mother’s Day.
Then
we moved into a larger house in a new neighbourhood that was on the outskirts
of the city. I started taking lunch to school. Bologna was cheap and for years
that was what made up most of our lunch sandwiches. One day my brother told mom
that he was getting tired of the same sandwich every day. But I stuck up for
those sandwiches. I liked bologna. I don’t know if his sandwiches changed but
mine stayed basically the same until I graduated. Occasionally for variety, Mom
switched tomato or cheese for the bologna.
When I turned twelve I started earning
my own money through paper delivery and babysitting and that is when my food
choices really changed. A few times a week I went to a nearby restaurant for
chocolate sundaes or French fries with friends after school or we’d meet on
weekends. We still didn’t have what today we term as junk food in the house so
I had to buy my own. I bought chocolate bars and ate two at a time. If the
people I was babysitting for left a large bag of chips out for me to snack on,
I would eat the whole bag. I was suddenly getting plenty of sugar and fats in
my diet.
I also began bingeing at home, making
myself bread and jam or bread and cheese sandwiches before supper. Not just one
or two, but until I was full. And then I would eat supper an hour later.
Because she now worked, Fridays were the
only day that mom still made bread and that was because dad, who worked out of
town during the week, was coming home for the weekend. I sometimes bought the
family a chocolate cake and chocolate swirl ice cream for dessert with our
Friday night suppers.
My first real job was at a small,
drive-in restaurant, which I had to walk about two kilometres to. The owner let
the staff eat hamburgers, fries, milkshakes, and ice cream at a discount. My
next job was in a Kentucky Fried Chicken, (KFC as it is known today), outlet
which was closer to my home. There, staff could eat all the chicken we wanted.
I indulged until eventually the novelty wore off.
I
was still very active. I had lots of friends at our new house and we had the
freedom of biking into the countryside for exploration. Occasionally, I biked
over to see my former friends and I was still walking to school.
As I advanced into junior high school
there were new and varied sports introduced to our physical education. I began
playing basketball, volleyball, baseball, and badminton. I even learned a few
dance steps. Since I was good at sports I belonged to the school’s volleyball
and basketball teams. We practiced two days a week after school and travelled
to other schools to play games and tournaments.
In high school I also belonged to the
school teams. And I still walked everywhere because it was unheard of for my
parents to drive me to my friend’s house, or downtown, or to high school
football games at other schools. Swimming and figure skating were two more
activities I took in gym class.
One
memory stands out very clearly from my teen years. It was to have an effect on
the next four decades of my life.
When I was in grade nine one of my
teachers decided that as a gracious community gesture our class would hold a
spring tea for the seniors who lived in a nearby lodge. And to bridge the
generation gap each of the students would “adopt” one of the seniors as an honorary grandparent.
“When your adopted grandparent
arrives, he or she will be shown to their place at a table and it will be your
responsibility to serve them tea and cake and to get to know them,” my teacher explained.
On the day of the tea we decorated the gymnasium with balloons
and streamers and waited. Because this was such a novel idea there was a television
reporter and cameraman from the local television station to cover the event.
Later that evening I watched myself and some of the other students on the news.
Finally the seniors’ bus pulled up. The
boys who had been assigned to help them off the bus rushed out. From just
inside the gymnasium doorway I watched the sea of white heads as the old men
and women slowly made their way down the hall. The women were dressed in their
best outfits with their sparse hair done up and rouge on their wrinkled cheeks.
The men wore ill-fitting suits or pants and shirts. Some walked on their own,
some used walkers or canes, and some were helped. This was before most places
were wheelchair accessible so no one who may have been in a wheelchair
attended.
I was one of the greeters and I stood at
the door waiting to welcome them. As each approached I pinned a corsage on the
women’s dresses and men’s shirts or suit coats. Most of them smiled or said
thank you but a few looked lost as if they weren’t sure where they were or what
they were doing here. Once they had their corsage they were escorted to their
tables, which were set so that there would be two “grandparents” and two “grandchildren”
at each one.
When everyone was seated I went to the long
table holding the pieces of cake and picked up two plates. I carried them to
the table where my “grandmother” sat and introduced myself.
“What do you take in your tea?” I asked.
“Just a little sugar,” she said, her voice shaky.
I went to the tea pots and
poured her a cup. I didn’t drink tea so
grabbed a glass of juice and returned to our table. I had a difficult time
relating to my adopted grandmother. Conversation was hard. Three of my natural
grandparents died before I knew them. I don’t ever remember
doing anything one-on-one with the grandmother who was part of my life. She was
always at family gatherings but as a child I don’t recall us ever spending a day or even an afternoon together.
I looked around the room. While most of
the seniors seemed happy with the tea, I felt pity for them. I didn’t like the
idea that they needed to be adopted, like a stray cat or dog or someone no one
else wanted. I felt sorry that they were old.
As
I walked home after school I thought about the afternoon. I knew that I never
wanted to be in the position where I had to have strangers “adopt” me. I never
wanted to be old.
And that was when, at the age of
fifteen, I decided that I would commit suicide when I reached sixty-five years
of age. I would not go through those years of my life as a lonely, old woman
waiting for someone to be nice to me.
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