Living alone? It’s not a bad thing. You come and go whenever you want. Eat whenever you want. Clean (or not) whenever you want. You control the temperature of your home. And imagine the video/music/tv viewing freedom!

So what could go wrong? Old Age.

All those freedoms are fantastic for mobile, alert, supple people, with great vision. Young people. When you’re an older person, these are the pertinent freedoms:

1. You can dig out your own slivers, wherever they are. If you can reach…or find the tweezers…or see the sliver…
2. Same with toenail clippings. Woo hoo! Chiropractor, anyone?
3. You get to answer the door even if you are mid-stream your third morning urination.
4. You wash the dishes. All of them. Yourself. You can still do them anytime you want, though. And you have the freedom to make as many dirty as you want!
5. You get to remember the last time you vacuumed. Doing it the same day every week helps if you can remember to write the day down someplace easy to find. Dirt is not as easy to see, these days.
6. Same with laundry. The less active older person needs laundry less, so it’s a little easier to forget, but if you’re looking for your glasses when they’re on your head…
7. You can rest on the floor whenever you want. If a senior falls in an empty apartment, does he make a sound? If only we made a special sound. But the lonely senior better have a warning system with younger people in the loop.
8. You get to quietly fume when the toilet roll runs out and the new rolls are in the front hall closet. Bonus: you get to be the one who put them there.
9. Lonely? What senior living alone is lonely? Who needs the touch of another human being? Not me, I prefer being able to drink right out of the juice container.

That’s enough. Living at both ends of the spectrum of life and negotiating each stage of existence from one end to the other is challenging, but what else is there? It’s not fair when that understanding only comes with the wisdom of age.

Unfair, but true.

September is not National Be Kind to A Senior Month. There is no such month. There is a Senior Citizens Month, established in May 1963, by John F. Kennedy.* If you’re young and didn’t know, hope it makes you feel better I didn’t know either.

Can’t wait for May 2026!

Hope I make it…

*Please. Google it

PS For no good reason: “What the Puck?”