This is a blog quote written by a Montreal woman named Janet Torge a 70s something senior wanting to reconnect with friends from the past. I don’t know Janet, I don’t even know if she is still in Montreal or even if she is still alive but that comment, wow, it really hit home. Many of the older people I work with are lonely and most of them have lost friends to illness and death. Rich lives filled with happy conversation and dinner parties dwindle to on-line games of scrabble with computers as companions.
“In past careers, Janet was a documentary filmmaker, radio talk-show host and traffic reporter, a Montreal Gazette columnist, author, prenatal teacher and doula, construction site manager, software manual creator and co-founder of the first rape relief centre in Canada. ” That is a lot of hats for one person to try on, she evidently had energy. Her legacy project was called Radical Rest Homes, an idea for a mutually supportive co-living community that was to enable seniors to maintain their independence and dignity and age with grace.
I don’t know what happened to Janet, and I cannot see anywhere that her idea came to life. There is still a webpage but the past posts are from 2023. In the few interviews I found, she is a quirky, determined individual with a self-deprecating sense of humour. She is the kind of person I would like to share a conversation with and she did some crazy things as she tracked down old friends from decades ago. I like that!
Why am I writing about someone I do not even know? Because that line made me realize we will all eventually be Janets…it reminds me not to let the magic of today slip away as I navigate to-do lists, ideas and someday projects. As my sailing buddy Bruce once said, “we all have an expiry date, we just don’t know when it is.”
I don’t want to be that person who puts off saying “you matter” to someone I care about. I don’t intend to be the ‘I’ll call him tomorrow’ because there may not be another chance. Had I known I would never speak to him again, I would have spent more time with my father on our last call together.
If you have a Senior in your life, take an extra few minutes with them, tell them you love them and make sure they know how important they are. Tell them how they made a difference, learn from their experiences and wisdom and pass the stories along.
Who knows, maybe someone will see this post and tell a still-living Janet that she had an impact on a complete stranger, that her poignant and humorous post made a difference to me and maybe to you as well.
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