I made a surprise visit to my senior friend JAM recently.
I met him maybe 6 years ago when I was friend with a friend of his, a woman poet. The elderly woman used to take walks around my neighborhood and when I engaged her, she recited short lovely poems to me, poems she was proud of and wanted to publish. Our first conversations were about putting together a chap book (usually a small book published by the person or an editor meant for small distribution, like at poetry readings at coffee houses or art galleries, often free or for the cost of printing.) She wanted her only grandson to have her intellectual property rights.
I have a soft spot for seniors who are alone in life, without living or local family to look in on them.
The woman poet only had her grandson and Jam, who with his wife, had been this couple's best friends. The woman poet died several months after I began visiting and phoning her frequently. She was dying of cancer and had not yet been told the truth, though she suspected. I was with her the night before she died, and met her grandson only then.
JAM was also depressed not only because he was surrounded in a senior living place with people who were dealing with illness or dying, because of the death of his wife, who he had known and been married to over 60 years! Now in his 90's JAM is my "oldest" friend, but because he does have family to look in on him (people I will probably never meet) I don't visit with him as often.
JAM's way out of his depression was WRITING. He joined several senior - oriented writing clubs and classes and recorded mostly memoirs some of his short stories or chapters published.
This visit he surprised me by pulling out his Barnes and Noble NOOK! JAM bragged that he might be ready to go but he always kept up with technology and with this NOOK he was able to access Los Angeles Public Library and download books. He had read near 40 in the last several months on the NOOK. He surprised me by telling me he didn't like non-fiction especially not history, and naming his favorite writers of suspense, mystery, and murder. Since he is slowing down physically, this has saved him the hardship of walking with a cane to take public transportation to the library.
UPDATE OCTOBER 2016 ...JAM DIED THIS PAST SPRING...
