Sixtysomethings With Anxiety Community Group
This is a group of 60 and over who are suffering with anxiety and approaching their retirement years. You are welcome to share your experiences and dispense/receive advice and support.
The gift of LIFE. I post here on occasion and am a 65 YO who has dealt with low self esteem, depression and anxiety for more than 40 years.
One successful approach to dealing with my loneliness has been to become a volunteer at a local hospital. I visit infirmed patients in their rooms and offer the distractions of conversation and free magazines. The work initially distressful but I learned to become better at what I do.
Yesterday I had no idea what I was about to experience and the amount of personal growth it would bring in me. Arriving I was told of the need of a dieing patient to have someone be with them. This 87 YO had no one and the head nurse did not want her passing alone. Two-way conversation was out of the question and I quickly asked the patient if I could hold her hand. She, with some effort, gave me her hand, which I stoked and caressed for the next few hours. She drifted in/out of consciousness and I squeezed her hand occasionally to confirm that I was still there.
This time I spent silently with here became a time for me to reflect on life and death and my place in life. Not to many years ago I made a unsuccessful attempt at suicide. What I got from this patient was LIFE. I came to know this stranger a viable aggregate of experiences that was about to move on after a long life. It made me look back at my life and find positive things that occurred in my life and helped me confirm that ending it by my hand will never again be an option. Too often I am able to lose myself in negative thoughts and spiral down from there. Life is now to be looked as something difficult but achievable. I have known death and now it is time to know life, even that life that I have not lived yet.
I thought briefly about what to say to the patient when I left and came up with thanking her for the growth she gave me and told her that she made a difference which I will always remember. I also told her that I would see her tomorrow as I volunteer 2 days a week. Regardless of her status I feel satisfied that I had and did make a positive difference in their life and I suppose spiritually I might want to believe that someday we may meet again.
Thank you if you read this long and hopefully uplifting post. I know and understand the need to vent here but also know the need to show healing.
This was healing between this stranger and me and now I must practice being a force of good in other's lives.
