The Poppies' Blog

I like elderly people. I do. I think its fascinating to hear the stories of their lives... or our history. So many are forgotten and overlooked when we should be learning from them and honestly, listening to their stories.

Before Little Poppet came along, both my husband and I would go to nursing homes to visit the elderly on Christmas day. Now, we both did this together as a couple, but had also both gone before we were married. Just one more thing about my husband that I love!

Christmas day is usually a day when the precious souls in nursing homes are all alone. Whilst the odd few get family visitors, probably the ones with an inheritance to leave, many just sit alone on those days. But then, many of them sit alone most days.

Well, its very easy to arrange a visit with a nursing home. Just stop in or phone them in advance to see if they have any visiting options for Christmas day. You can offer to bring food (they may have regulations on that though) or gifts. If you really want to bring gifts, just ask the person you arrange the visit with what sort of things they'd like. If you have children, they can make cards or something special to give to them.

Then, just go and listen. Listen to the stories of where they grew up and how things were in those days. Listen to what sort of work they did or who they knew or met over the years. Listen to their war time stories. Just listen to them.

In our parent's day they were told about how it was in the war. And not to in any way minimise what our soldiers have to bear, but those wars weren't fought with what is a bit like a game boy. It wasn't done on a screen with buttons and tracking systems, they crawled on the ground and fought for their lives. (yes, actually our soldiers still do this...) For our lives. And yes, I so respect and value what our present day soldiers are doing. I hope that one day when they are older people will listen to them, as well.

But you don't hear parent's of today telling their children 'in my day we didn't have food and had rations and illness took the lives of so many...'. No, more than likely our children hear things like 'in my day we didn't have an ipod or a Wii!'. To which our children probably nearly faint with the shock.

We have it so good. Yes, we still have soldiers that go and fight for our freedoms. They should be so honoured and covered with our prayers. But we are very blessed. And a big part of why we have those freedoms and why things are the way they are for us is because of those precious elderly people who fought for them and worked for a better future for their children and their children's children.

So, we've not visited a nursing home since we had our daughter but I'm thinking its time to again. This time with our future. There are so many things about our history I want her to learn. I don't just want her to learn these things from a history book. No, I want her to hear it first hand, from the the ones who made that history.