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My neighborhood is graying rapidly.
A number of these neighbors are losing certain abilities such as
Driving.
So to help, I'll offer rides. Do you help?
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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In our neighborhood people tend to move out and downsize after the kids are grown, because the homes and yards are really big for the elderly to maintain. other than a few families that have taken in their elderly parents there aren't any elderly around. My parents live 3 hours away, and while I go up and stay overnight to help them every couple of months, they have younger neighbors that have sort of adopted them and are readily available if they need anything. It's great peace of mind to know that someone close by is looking after them.
We periodically provide meals for some of our older-than-us neighbors, do some shopping for them, pick-up prescriptions (closest town is 19 miles away), take their trash cans to the curb and bring them back in on trash day, offer rides, check on them, etc. We just try to be good neighbors.
We are among the group of older homeowners here in the NY neighborhood now. All the older ones have died over the past few years. The younger neighborhood guys saw DH on a ladder cleaning the gutters last weekend and were half teasing him about getting too old to be doing that. And so it begins for us. At least we have older neighbors in FL yet.
One neighbor needed to walk for his heart and his wife made him walk to get the newspaper at the convenience store every morning. Many times he would get to the top of the hill on our street at the stop sign and hitch a ride with unsuspecting 'helpful' neighbors, I was one of those doing what we thought was a good deed.
A few years ago a neighbor who was in her mid 70's was on her garage's flat roof shoveling heavy snow off. The weight of the snow was making the roof sag just enough that she couldn't get the garage door up to open it. We came down with shovels to help but she was having none of it, thank you very much. There was also a solid inch of ice under the snow. She shoveled just enough to get her car out and go. We came back as soon as she left, got rid of the rest of the snow off her roof and drive and spent an hour chipping the ice off her drive. We finished and hurried home before she found us there.
This same woman did come to ask for help getting her husband off the floor, he had fallen out of his wheelchair. There was a two inch difference between two floors and his chair had tipped over. Her husband was in end stage prostate cancer and weak. I came into the house and as sick as he was, he said "the damn woman is trying to kill me, but it didn't work this time" and then he smiled.
I miss those old neighbors. When we moved in, one introduced himself as the Commodore, the one across the street from him wanted us to call him Farmer, everyone did. My favorite was at the end of the street and he told me to call him B.A. which was short for Bag Ass. I never asked. They are all gone now, the end of an era, gentlemen all, even B.A.
I like helping when I can but realize there's a fine line when doing so. I'll offer and let them accept or not. The snow on the roof episode was the one exception and everyone saved face because we didn't mention it and neither did she. And that crafty Commodore hitching rides? I was always conflicted over that one. On one hand I was helping him circumvent his exercise but on the other hand I was helping him get enjoyment from putting one over his wife. Who knows which one was better for him.
Although retired ourselves, we are still fairly "young". We help our neighbors all the time. My husband is probably the most help. Together we have helped build fences and stack firewood. He usually does the more heavy stuff. Cutting trees, digging, defrosting frozen pipes etc. etc.
I'm good at helping with computers and sharing our garden veggies. Feeding animals etc.
Basically, what goes around comes around. And we hope that when we need help, we'll have someone to help us, too.
When you llive outside of town, your neighbors are your family. We love our neighbors.
I might also add....
I think it's really important to invite our single/widowed neighbors to a family meal/bbq fairly often. I'm cooking anyway and an extra person is never too much.
We have also taken our neighbor on camping trips. She hasn't been able to do that since her husband died.
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