Dear LPG, 

I know that it has been said many times before but being limited to your home for so long has really changed many pensioners and not for the better.  We hear a lot about how important it is to have something to do, and I still believe that if some of those things help other people it makes you feel a sense of self-worth that you can’t get from anything else you do during each day.

I remember hearing about someone who, when we were not allowed to visit or get out, wrote notes of encouragement and put them under the doors of her neighbour’s apartments just to make her exercise walk through the corridors of the sheltered accommodation where she lived more meaningful, and the elation she felt when she found a thank you note from one of them under her door.  

But now that the lockdown part of the pandemic is all but over, it has left a lot of us older people missing of our day centres and the other activities that we have become used to and that feeling of usefulness can add to feelings of boredom. 

One of the older residents in the sheltered housing that I live in has taken to harking back to the profession she retired from some eighteen years ago.  She goes out to the flower shop once a week, buys flowers and makes small posies that she gives to her fellow residents.  Her visits to our front doors have become a part of the weekly routine and the other day, when she stopped by, we got talking.  

I asked her why she does it and her immediate answer was, ‘Practise makes perfect’.  She told me that it is good to keep in touch with a skill that she learnt so long ago.  It keeps her hands busy and she finds real pleasure at the flower shop when choosing the blooms each week.  She also told me that although the neighbours she gives them to really don’t need them, they accept them and there is something very special about being thanked even if what you gave was not vital to anyone’s existence.  She also told me that it allows her to have conversations that she would otherwise not be able to be part of, like the one we were having at the time.

She got me thinking.  I have concluded that doing things for other people is a really important pastime and such activity can be more important than you think for your own wellbeing, even if the things that you are doing are not influencing life-threatening situations.  Arguably, just bringing something unusual to the door (flowers, a cup cake, a motivational note or just a verbal greeting), whether it is potentially lifesaving or not, will also bring an excuse to talk to someone else.  The result can make all the difference sometimes and perhaps be a lifesaving pursuit for all concerned. 

CC, Crofton Park