100th Birthday

Who would have thought – 100 years of age! All that time on this earth and my reward….A chocolate cake!

Have I enjoyed my long life? Yes and No.. I do have regrets of course. Who wouldn’t after all these years? And hindsight is a wonderful thing, but there isn’t much I can do about it now.

I sat in my wheelchair with the rug on my knees and looked around. It was just a room full of old people. Some were sleeping. Others were staring into space. There were one or two shuffling around.

When I was a young girl I thought 30 years of age was old. My grandparents seemed so ancient that I often watched them and wondered how they could possible still be alive? They had produced my mother when they themselves were getting on in years – at least 45 and that was because of the war. Something about Grandad coming home and not being ‘quite right’ for a long time. Anyway they had my mum when most of their friends had children who were much older.

 And then, according to my Gran, my mum apparently wasn’t the type of girl to attract many suitors. She was quit plain and a shy person and was often told after she married my Dad that she was lucky to have hooked him, being so good looking and with a ‘happy go lucky’ personality to boot!

I think that was an awful thing to tell your own daughter but it was apparently the way my Gran was. And it didn’t seem to stop my parents from having a wonderful marriage and a beautiful daughter together – that’s me!!

I on the other hand had disastrous marriages from the beginning to the end.

I met my first husband on a blind date. My friends had set me up with Charles promising that he was ‘the man for me’….

Well for the first two years of marriage he did seem like the man for me…charming, clever, fun and more daring than anyone I had ever met.

Unfortunately Charles had a terrible motor cycle accident and after that he and our marriage changed completely. I tried to be a good wife. I tried to understand how someone can change after a trauma in their life and what they need is support from their partner. But our life together got rather boring, bland and unimaginative and I really couldn’t live with someone like that….so I left.

I know I was branded as callous, hard, unfeeling and just plain horrible but I had to think of myself after all, and Charles did meet someone else and go on to lead the kind of life they both enjoyed., which lessened the guilt for me. I travelled and saw the world. I worked in, and managed the finest hotel around the globe. I chatted with actors and actresses of all nationalities and talent. I laughed with businessmen, tycoons, and would be millionaires. I danced with politicians and professors. My life was filled with laughter, fun, wining and dining and of course romances.

Then I met Robert. He showed me how to live a life that never took a breath – a never ending party with no work and all play. I had a ball and didn’t really notice that the years were passing by so very quickly.

We decided to marry when I was in my forties and Robert was already sixty.

We continued to travel and act as if life was giant celebration – no restrictions to where we went or what we did with our lives – with a never ending supply of money, it wasn’t difficult to do.

I never thought about children or being a mother. I was too busy having fun. I didn’t think about anything serious or restricting. I lived a totally selfish life.

My father had passed away while I was living overseas and even though I came back for his funeral I didn’t stay very long. I didn’t think I had reason to. My mother had friends. She didn’t need me.

When I had noticed how frail my mother had looked at my father’s funeral I realised that having been married for over 50 years, she would be very lonely without him, so I spent a few weeks at home with my mother, promising to come back once a year when I left.

I hadn’t heard much from Robert while I was away but didn’t really think that much about it. I knew he had such a busy social life during the day and into the night that he slept til late in the morning. When he did get up it was usually to sit and eat his brunch whilst reading the daily paper or take a dip in the pool or to relax in the hot tub.

What I didn’t expect was that Robert had moved on while I had been away. Apparently he had met someone else and they were madly in love. He said he didn’t love me anymore but I would be ‘well looked after’!  Maybe alarms bells should have gone off when after a year of marriage one of Roberts’s friends told me, after quite a few drinks, that nobody could quite believe

Robert had settled down after so many years of wine, women and more women!!

A very sizable sum of money had been deposited into my bank account. I felt as if I had been paid for being a fun companion, someone to party with and when the ‘used by date’ reached its expiry it was time to charter new waters. I felt a little sad and used but all I really wanted to do was head for home. I was now well into my 50’s – almost 60 and probably tired from all the partying and fun. Best to settle now I thought.

I had been back for a week when my mum got really sick. She had cancer and was given a few months to live. So I moved in with her and cared for her. As I nursed her and sat holding her hand in the night when she was in pain and would call out as she couldn’t sleep, I realised how much of our lives together I had missed. I was her only child and a daughter at that, and I was away for most of her life. I tried to make up for it by my care and love but she went downhill very quickly and we had to get a palliative care nurse in. I of course could pay for it, so I had to make this the little compensation for not being here. For not being a good daughter and for not giving my mum the grandchildren she always yearned for.

She died after 6 weeks, not knowing me or recognising me for the last week. My heart was broken and I was disappointed at myself.

I became reclusive. I didn’t want to see people or go anywhere. I didn’t really have any friends as I had left and lost touch with any I did have.

I led a very lonely life but I wasn’t unhappy. I had my parents’ house and a huge garden that I loved. When my mums dog Jasper died, I got another one, and another one after that. I wrote too. I was always good at writing at school. I felt it was a release and in a way it was as if I had friends. I got to know the characters of a book well and felt connected to them.

I think I just became known as the old lady in the big house opposite the park. She’s the one who only leaves home to buy groceries.

I would come out very late at night and walk through the park and down onto the river bank. Sometimes I would sit and just think about things.

The years rolled into each other and I was getting old.

I had managed to reach old age without having to go into hospital or see a doctor very often. And only home visits.

Then when I was in my eighties I slipped in the garden one cold and wet winter’s day and couldn’t get up. The pain in my back was excruciating and it was a long time before a neighbour heard my cries for help. An ambulance was called and I was taken to hospital.

I had broken my back so it was decided, because I didn’t have any next of kin to look after me, that I would be better off in a nursing home. I could be cared for there.

The house was sold. My dog given to a ‘good home’ and I moved in here.

It hasn’t been all bad. It is one of the better nursing homes. The staff are nice enough. I have made some friends but then gradually lost them. New ones come in and I find someone else to chat to. There are little burst of conversation but mainly the people here sit and stare. They let their minds wander to another place. Sometimes someone calls out a name and then maybe a tear or two trickles down their cheek. I am lonely sometimes but I am old and this is it for me. I have to make the most of it.

Not too many folk celebrate their 100^th birthday.

Considering the lifestyle I had when young, I am fortunate to have lived to this age. Nobody from my past would know about today. To them the 15^th June is just another day on the calendar of life.

 Sometimes I long for visitors who are family, not just volunteers. I regret not having children and most likely grandchildren but that was my choice.

The cake is brought in. It is bright with flickering candles. A chorus of Happy Birthday erupts and I look forward to a piece of the chocolate sponge.