Goodbye Sleepy Jean

One of the responsibilities I've elected to continue following retirement has been to keep my seat on a citizen advisory board for a private nonprofit in Salt Lake City. This citizen committee acts as an oversight board and really that should be in quotation marks. I could really get off on a tangent about this advisory board but that that's not what I want to blog about today. I'm sure I'll come back to the citizens advisory board at another point in time. Actually, I do, have to write about the board today. So hang in there. I sit on this board with four, there were five other board members besides myself. These board members are all female seniors. Little old ladies, at least in their 70s. I know for a fact these folks have been sitting on this board for more than 10 years that I am aware of and who knows how much longer. For the ladies, I think they are all members of the Elks Lodge and the other I know was a long time local political activist working in the area of low income and to some degree still is.

Last week I was notified, when I arrived at the meeting, that Jean one of the longtime board members had died. This was no surprise since earlier in the year her family had moved her from her living situation into long-term nursing care i.e. a nursing home. I guess Jean had been suffering from Alzheimer's the last years of her life. It's hard to say how long she suffered from this disease process. She got pretty mean towards the end – – but by some accounts she was pretty mean to begin in some ways. She seemed angry all the time but acted pretty civilly at the meetings and basically got along well. However, whenever Jean did not attend one of these meetings it was kind of like open season on the old lady was kind of sad. I really felt uncomfortable some of the time at these meetings. Dave, is the director of these meetings and he did really well trying to keep the backbiting at bay but I could tell it was hard on the boy. And even if there was a lot of caustic remarks directed at Jean, I really think the ladies did like her at some level and worked hard to support Jean in their own way. I was impressed to find this morning that most of the members of the advisory board attended Jean's funeral. They dredged up good things to say about the blue haired senior even though they would've rather not. Dave suggested towards the end of the meeting that perhaps we, as a board, get together in the next couple weeks and have a lunch in honor of Jean. There was a silence for a minute a lot of looking at the table looking at our hands. Then the old ladies chorused perhaps that would be a good idea perhaps we should do this. I was pretty much indifferent, I will go along with whatever they choose, I'm the youngest of the lot and will always defer to their wisdom. I was just wondering at some point in time where the seniors not just tagging up the base knowing indeed the Grim Reaper was not that far down the road and when the scythe swings and they fall to the rest they know the coffee klatch well review the service and the life of their fellow board member and we all want a good report.