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The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised, and proud lady, fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock with her hair fashionably coiffed and makeup perfectly applied even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.
After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.
"I love it," she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.
"Mrs. Jones, you haven't seen the room ... just wait."
"That doesn't have anything to do with it," she said. "It's something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged, it's how I arrange my mind. I've already decided to love it. It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do."
She continued, "Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away just for this time in my life. Old age is like a bank account, you only withdraw from what you've put in. My advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories."
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
Free your heart from hatred. Free your mind from worries. Live simply. Give more. Expect less.
Are you aware that if we died tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days, but the family we left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives?
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