When Your Golden Years start to Rust

Like the sun approaching the horizon leaving a beautiful painting across the sky, your Golden Years are supposed to be a beautiful reward for a lifetime of work. They’re supposed to be leisurely, joyous retirement days filled with family, travel, and whatever your heart desires. However, for so many aging and ailing seniors, the Golden Years is just a fantasy, a myth that might have been real once. Or may be real for others, but definitely not for you.

My 78 year old mom should be enjoying her Golden Years. She put in a lifetime of toil raising two daughters as a single mom and caring for her grandmother, and mother who both had dementia. Then she cared for her ailing step-dad who had cancer. These years were supposed to be Golden. If anyone deserves to enjoy her Golden Years, it’s her. But not only does she have the beginning stages of dementia, but the small strokes we didn’t know she had years ago, has affected her eye sight making her practically blind.

Yesterday, we ventured on a trip to Dallas to take her to see my sister, but the trip didn’t go as planned. Watching her struggle with her memory and get sad and upset because she didn’t remember the trip taking so long was hard. So instead of continuing the five hour journey, an hour and a half into the ride, we stopped for dinner, then headed back home.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, the comments my mom was saying were really funny! She definitely still has her sense of humor. I wish I could remember them all or have recorded them, but I do remember her saying…

“these are supposed to be the golden years. What’s golden about them?”

I told her her golden years were probably the last 10 years, and she contemplated that. Then I started joking about these years being the tarnished years or the rusted years to lighten the mood, and we all had a good laugh. It’s funny, but the thought or what’s supposed to be our Golden years rusting is no joke.

So here’s a life lesson from my mom… don’t wait for your golden years… They don’t exist. With every new sunrise, seize the day and live like there is no tomorrow!