Wrinkles and elderly people...

Older woman obsess with the wrinkles, trying to paralyze their faces and get rid of the unsightly canyons on their face. I believe that wrinkles are a badge of honor and dignity. They are like a map of your lifelong achievements, your love, and your family. They show that you remember forty years ago, fifty years ago. Of course, I have no wrinkles myself being only twelve but I always smile when I see a wrinkled person hobbling by me. Perhaps it is that they have seen and known compassion and have some to give. They are peaceful, they have seen more troubled times and know the consequences of their actions. Yet they are neglected and forgotten, left in homes without their loved ones, where they can only read, if their sight permit, or muse about days gone by. In America this culture of throwing your parents into this dungeon of sorts is widespread. All of my elderly neighbors are now in retirement homes, save for one family whose children are caring enough to live with them. In Poland, this mania is beginning to catch on but my grandparents have always lived in their respective homes, with my out-of-the-country family to take care of them. I myself could not bear to leave my mother and my father in such a place. My father, the lover of nature, of birds and flowers needs a place to sit amidst the wildnerness, contemplating about life and telling jokes in Polish to my mother. I can only hope that I will live on a farm when I am older, and that my beloved parents will be there with me if they choose to. I myself can't imagine life in a retirement home... there's not much to like about a building where you are mostly alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to. The doctors and nursemaids that occasionally come by are not like your loving child or beaming grandchild. Life is love. Love is family. Love is friends. By yourself you cannot exist. You can only sit in wait of death for there is no one to smile at or no way to hear human words. People left in retirement homes with no family and no friends... what do they have? Or perhaps their family just doesn't want to see their wrinkled face and listen to stories of times gone by...