Community Service at a Retirement Home

Community Service Retirement

I went to a local retirement home for a half day of volunteer service not long ago, in part because I needed some service for my degree but also because of a death of the grandparent of a friend. That had gotten me thinking about what it was really like to be around people as they lived out their lives. Where they just tied to medical devises and routines, and what might it be like to talk about their memories. I had heard that a lot of people remembered the good parts of their accomplishments as their lives started coming to a close.

I was wrong on many fronts. Particularly the one about the memories. As it turned out, I found myself in the midst of a confrontation on a battlefield of a war of opposites!

Dave was one of the characters; Allan the other. Dave had spent his entire career as a Coast Guard officer and a federal marshal. He had been involved in guarding judges, transferring prisoners, and otherwise protecting high-level officials. Before becoming a marshal, he had served his commitment in the Coast Guard and then signed on for active reserve duty. He had apparently gotten punished for an administrative disagreement and ended up losing much of his pension and good standing.

Allan, on the other hand, was apparently a pretty well-known and aggressive entrepreneur. He had help start some successful new retail businesses, and then turned to working with nonprofits to show them how to open a for-profit business to earn revenues for the charity. Apparently he developed some notable projects. By the end of his career he had lost his money through weak investments and housing properties. Then it turned out he couldn't find work because he was too expensive as a staff person and he couldn't earn a living as a consultant.

Opinionated, loud, stubborn, both passed their days making it clear through arguments of different topics about what had gone wrong in their lives and careers. Both thought they were stuck in the "bad" retirement home (which it really wasn't) because of the choices they had made.

I had never imagined that that kind of feisty argument was what I would find with the elderly residents. In reality the two guys were pretty much the hit of the place because they were different when I was with them one on one. But the feeling of the passion of their discussions surprised me.