Three Cheers for Seniors

A few weeks ago, I made a drastic decision. I decided to go gray! After all these years, I finally got tired of the hair color, and everything that goes with it.  So, before I could change my mind, I dug a gray wig out that I had bought about a year ago, combed and styled it, threw it on my head and waited for the fun to begin.  I walked in to my sister Sherry’s apartment. Her faced dropped and she said right off the bat “I don’t like that gray hair”. I said right back “Get used to it”. This is the new ME!
Well, I have to admit it took some getting used too. But I’m slowly, surely getting used to it, and I’ve almost quit  jumping every time I pass a mirror and wondering who that old lady is following me around. I get a kick out of walking in someplace, where most people there know me, and see the startled looks on their faces when they realize it’s me.
But there are some real advantages to gray hair. For one thing, people seem to go out of their way to be nice to older, white haired ladies. Yesterday, my sister Sue and I were in Gastonia, N.C. visiting our older sister, who, by the way, will be ninety-one years old on January 12th, 2009. She is in a nursing home and has been for a good many years. Sue can’t walk too good because of a bad hip that she broke 7 years ago. When we walk across the street I always hold her hand and cars will stop for us and people, male and female , will smile and wave at us.
I have found that, around our part of the country, most people are  really decent, hard working people (who love their older parents), and it shows in their kindness to seniors.
Even our waiter sort of hovered over us, even telling us that he WAS going to take very good care of us. He did, too! Of course, when we left I had to almost drag Sue out of the restaurant because she wants to talk to everyone who looks her way. God forbid that they smile at her too! Her daughter Debbie tells us that we could talk to trees.
My  heart is so full of love for my sister Sue. She is a little opinionated and will argue a little if she THINKS she is right and will argue a  lot if she KNOWS  she is right, but she loves her sister Peggy with a passion and leaves no doubt in my mind that she would lay down her life for me. As I would for her. A lady that would get up at 7 a.m. to feed five stray cats that she took in, not counting about 3 or more that come to her door every morning hunting food, has got to have a big heart.
It’s such an honor to catch her hand as we walk across a road, as we have had to do for each other all these years that we have walked this journey we call life. One day we will walk hand in hand over Heaven and explore all the wonderful things waiting for us there.