Mine The Elderly

[Nameless Range]

...Of their knowledge and stories. This is not a lamentation, just a thought.

Over the last 20 years, my wife’s grandmother became one of my favorite people on earth. She was hard and ornery, and was married to a man from Wolf Creek, and they called Lincoln, MT home for most of their lives. She had so many wonderful stories of Montana when it was a different place. Of Lincoln, before there was such a thing as The Scapegoat or The Bob Marshall. Of fun that would land you in prison today. Of the power of old rural community when all they had were one another and the world was raw and lacking safety nets. She lived and loved in a different Montana. No matter what the family gathering, I am well known as my wife’s antisocial husband, who just pulls up a chair next to Great Grandma and spends the evening talking to her. She was legally blind and mostly deaf but still had a whole lot to say.

Yesterday, on the last day of her life, she had her favorite breakfast of biscuits and gravy at our house, played with her great grandkids, and a half hour after leaving her 85 year old heart stopped beating.

This is not a statement of sadness. More a reminder - that the world has changed so fast, that those who lived in it only 80 years ago lived in a very different one. Today’s world is so full of voices that the demographic that doesn’t participate in the way voices are shared nowadays is often left silent. They are often the voices of souls worth seeking out.

 

[fishing4sanity]

It is truly fascinating and a blessing to be with people like your wife's grandmother. My Grandma died a little less than a year ago at the age of 102. She was amazing to visit with and as you mentioned, those from that era lived and experienced a different life. Cherish the conversations you had with her.

 

[noharleyyet]

Well said nameless. Sorry for your family’s loss. I’m sure she would have approved the testimony.

 

[I’iwi Akepa]

I am now a part time care giver for my 93 year old mother in law whose body is beginning to fail her. In the year before Covid kept her home bound I would take her on daily excursions using a walker. She was more alert then and I would often ask her about her life growing up in the 1940’s in the coffee fields in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Skipping school when it was harvest time. Heating up bath water by burning wood under a 55 gallon drum, having to chase down a chicken in the yard for dinner and splitting one can of Vienna sausage between three kids for lunch. No refrigeration. She would walk miles from upper Kona down to the ocean for a swim and then hike back up....barefoot, through lava fields and Kiawe trees. (You might call them Mesquite) I can’t imagine kids doing that today. You are right! People lived much different lives back then and what would cause wonder today was how the majority of people’s everyday lives were.

 

[F250]

Thank you for sharing Nameless. Sorry for your loss. Sounds like you made her final moments the very best.

 

[hank4elk]

Right on Nameless.
I was lucky to have spent my 1st 23 years around my Grandpa & Grandma,tho Grandma passed in early 70's. Both born in late 1880's. The stories & the life they lived was very different from even my parents who where born in 1920's & were Depression Era kids & left collage to join the services to fight in WWII. Even the kitchen smells were different.
I wish I had recorded those conversations when I had a chance. I did write down & tape the last ones with mom & dad during hospice.

 

[3855WIN]

Thanks for listening, Nameless. Hers sounds like a life well lived.

 

[F250]

In 1971 my family drove to Saskatchewan to visit relatives that I had never met. Five of us, 2500 miles one way, in a 15' travel trailer, towed with a station wagon. Upon arriving in Pierceland , I met a cousin and his wife who were in their '80s. They had begun their journey north from Regina, homesteading along the way, living in sod cabins. When they reached what is now Pierceland, they established a sawmill and prospered. I treasure a copy of his written account of their lives.

 

[Dougfirtree]

True. I'm sorry for your loss, Nameless. I can't help but think how lucky you are though, that you figured this out before she passed and that you got so much time to listen to her (and I bet she appreciated that, too). Imagine how many people don't.

 

[Sytes]

Honorable testament.

 

[Southern Elk]

Sorry for your loss. I cherished listening to those kind of stories as well. I was fortunate to have my grandfather until 3 years ago.

He told stories of farming with mules. Chopping cotton with a hoe in the sweltering MS heat and picking cotton by hand. He grew up poor and had to help raise his younger siblings when his father died at a young age. We are spoiled and have it easy.

 

[Southern Elk]

I’d like to add to my post above that one of my grandmothers is still living. She has dementia and I remember more about her life than she does. I would encourage everyone to never take the older generations for granted and to listen every chance you get. There is so much wisdom there.

 

[RidgeRoamingRichard]

...Of their knowledge and stories. This is not a lamentation, just a thought.

Over the last 20 years, my wife’s grandmother became one of my favorite people on earth. She was hard and ornery, and was married to a man from Wolf Creek, and they called Lincoln, MT home for most of their lives. She had so many wonderful stories of Montana when it was a different place. Of Lincoln, before there was such a thing as The Scapegoat or The Bob Marshall. Of fun that would land you in prison today. Of the power of old rural community when all they had were one another and the world was raw and lacking safety nets. She lived and loved in a different Montana. No matter what the family gathering, I am well known as my wife’s antisocial husband, who just pulls up a chair next to Great Grandma and spends the evening talking to her. She was legally blind and mostly deaf but still had a whole lot to say.

Yesterday, on the last day of her life, she had her favorite breakfast of biscuits and gravy at our house, played with her great grandkids, and a half hour after leaving her 85 year old heart stopped beating.

This is not a statement of sadness. More a reminder - that the world has changed so fast, that those who lived in it only 80 years ago lived in a very different one. Today’s world is so full of voices that the demographic that doesn’t participate in the way voices are shared nowadays is often left silent. They are often the voices of souls worth seeking out.

Condolances for you loss, but it sounds like a life very well lived. Seniors in MT and everywhere get forgotten and left out. You made a real difference in her life and I'm sure you understand that generation in a way you couldn't have without hearing those stories. I can't tell you how many horrible situations we see that could've been prevented by family simply checking-in. Good for you.

 

[Brittany Chukarman]

Listen and learn all you can from them. If not, once there gone all that knowledge and history goes with them. My Dad passed 1/28 just a few weeks before his 94th birthday. We just had the service 2 days ago. There's a good reason they were called "The Greatest Generation".

 

[Straight Arrow]

We lost my Mom this past year, truly a great grandmother who passed at 101 years old knowing the end was near as she stated, "I was born in 1918 during the Spanish Flu and now I am going to take the Covid with me!" She was unhappy with the isolation of social distancing and missing great grandkids. She was born to homesteaders on the Big Flat near Hogeland, MT, with an adventurous mother coming from England and a hard working father immigrating from Norway. She was a Rosie the Riveter as a welder in the Portland shipyard during WWII. Mom spent most of her life in Great Falls, where she walked or took the bus everywhere, never having a drivers license. She was the perfect caring mom to four boys, as well as others who were embraced as "brothers from different mothers". Her Den Mother tenure was epic and five of us from one of her Cub Scout Dens attended her 100th birthday celebration, much to her delight. When the hospice doctor asked her if she felt like she was failing, she asked, "Do you know anyone 102?" He answered, "No" and she said, "Well!"

My pistol plinking and deer hunting Dad passed many years ago and was also raised by homesteaders on the Big Flat near Turner. As others have expressed, the importance of learning from that generation is a sadly fleeting opportunity and every single day I miss them and ache over missing so many chances to ask, listen, and learn. My bad.

 

[Lone Elk]

Great words Nameless. I was blessed to spend much time with my Grandparents and enrich my life through the stories of their lives. I now am blessed to spend the time with my parents, both in/near their 80's and listen to their life stories and experiences. To those that can, please enjoy your personal elders memories before they are lost forever.

 

[Nameless Range]

Sorry for your loss. I cherished listening to those kind of stories as well. I was fortunate to have my grandfather until 3 years ago.

He told stories of farming with mules. Chopping cotton with a hoe in the sweltering MS heat and picking cotton by hand. He grew up poor and had to help raise his younger siblings when his father died at a young age. We are spoiled and have it easy.

I do think that perspective is one of the chief things they can give us.

Great stories, insight into change, knowledge lost - all of them are important. But it is very true that one thing I often took away from our conversations is how soft a life I have lived. True and widespread hard times in this country are far in the rearview right now. It's important to me that not only I know that, but that my kids do. It's hard for them to understand how good they have it.

 

[Rzrbk]

Amen...., sorry for your loss. I miss visiting with those born before automobiles, knew how to plow behind a mule, experienced the depression, likely lived their early childhood without electricity or running water. My Mom grew up in one of the last places in the US to get electricity (Ozarks of Arkansas) and tells stories of buckboard wagons, visiting neighbors for a week at a time, and all pulling together to survive. Lots to learn there. My grandmother was a pioneer woman and I miss her greatly.

Hard times bring people together. I don't believe the apocalyptic movies where people turn on each other. America would be less divided if we weren't spoiled and living the easy life.

 

[Letthemgrow]

I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with my wife's great grandmother. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska with an outhouse, a manual water pump and talked about how exciting it was to have her father hitch the cart to the horses and be able to go in to town. She saw the automobile, World War, all kinds of vaccination developement and space flight. Quite a time to be alive. It always felt like she appreciated every little convenience in life that we took for granted.

 

[elkduds]

Listen and learn all you can from them. If not, once there gone all that knowledge and history goes with them. My Dad passed 1/28 just a few weeks before his 94th birthday. We just had the service 2 days ago. There's a good reason they were called "The Greatest Generation".

Sorry to hear of your loss, and Nameless' as well.

Lot of layers to this onion of losing ancestors. The sadness and recent history we lose when a relative we know dies. The times shared, the family closeness, "I want to see Great Grandpa, where is he?" Those are the ones we feel in our hearts.

Generational losses: Greatest generation as noted above; Depression generation; turn of the century when trains, then cars replaced horses here in the west; when Indian nations became open range and then homesteads or timber sales. Civil war generation, and on back...

The changes in the last 50 years or 150 years happened faster than ever before, the rate of technology change accelerates exponentially. An enormity of things people learned and knew have been lost, and never relearned or relearned differently. Even ancient civilizations had technology, medicine and social/political systems that are lost to time. Some native tribes don't record their history in writing. Instead they entrust their verbal history to selected historians who spend their lives listening and learning from the previous generations of historians, then passing that oral tradition along to the next generation of oral historians.

The older I get, the more important history becomes, because people and the land don't change much. In fact, it seems to me now that people change the land more than they change themselves, Right there is a giant lesson we still haven't learned.