There's a lot of things old people don't know in Pandemic

My grandmother lived in Los Angeles for 93 years before, following my grandfather’s death and at my mother’s urging, she moved up to a retirement community near my parents in Oregon.

She hadn’t even been there a year when the pandemic hit and forced me from California to Oregon as well. These last four months have opened my eyes to the tragedy of old age and the sadness of life for the elderly.

My grandmother lives in an “independent senior living” facility. She has a one-bedroom apartment in a string of other apartments all connected by a hallway and a shared dining room. There’s an activity room, I’m told, and an exercise room, where a handful of old folks lift their arms and feet in unison to a video workout and then, unable to recognize one another with their masks on, walk back to their apartments in silence.

But what has struck me the most about senior living is the loneliness, particularly before Oregon began to relax its restrictions. The little old lady with an apartment above my grandma’s who stands on her sliver of a balcony. No guests allowed. No activities available. Meals left outside the door to be eaten alone in their apartments. Every day spent watching tv or peering over the balcony. Elderly people don’t receive many phone calls, and when they do, it’s difficult for them to hear, to think of things to say. With age, they lose the ability to initiate friendships, to invite others to join them for a walk, to ask someone to sit outside and have tea. They can’t have a conversation if they’re six feet away from someone. Their concept of time is slippery. They don’t understand the pandemic and why they have to be alone.

But this is that they do know: the feeling of lukewarm oatmeal on their tongue. A six-ounce styrofoam cup of orange juice. Channel 12 news. The way the days circle around them, how sleep follows both lunch and dinner. The excitement of a stray cat. The power of a fragrant rose or a postcard to sustain them for two, three days.

There is a birdbath outside my grandmother’s back patio, but I’ve never seen a bird in it. It’s always and only full of yellow jackets and, sometimes, wasps. A dozen of them at a time, buzzing around, floating on the water’s surface.

“You’re luring them all here,” I tell my grandma, and dump the water out.

“They’re panicking,” she says. “They can’t find their water.”

The next time I visit, she has refilled the birdbath and yellow jackets swarm as we share lunch on the patio.

When she isn’t looking, I pick up the birdbath and hide it behind a tree.

The next time I come over, I see that she’s dragged it back over and filled it with water. It’s the hottest day of the summer and dozens of yellow jackets have appeared to drink the water.

“Grandma.” It’s all I can do to not shake my finger at her. “They’re going to sting you.”

“I like watching them,” she says. “They’re my friends.”

Last updated July 29, 2020