20 months (Epilogue)
Around late October, a woman named Susan called. After introducing herself, she said she was an employee of “Fellowship Plaza” senior
apartment. Her reason of calling was, long time ago, I had turned in a form for admittance, and it was my turn to move in.
About five and half years ago, a deacon I knew told me in the morning, “come quickly pastor, they are giving out the admittance form!” I went there as fast as I can, but since there were other elderly folks waiting since the early morning, I received mine towards the end. I have no idea where they all hear their news of forms. At that time, I saw many Chinese people wanting the forms. Also were Russians, Americans. Noticeably also a lot of Koreans were there. An oddity was, there was almost no Indian, Arabs, Mexicans, or Vietnamese didn’t exist just like the Liberty Tower.
After receiving my admittance form, I got a letter. From the 150 applicants, I was the 150th. Someone I knew told me that from my number, I would probably have to wait 6, 7 years. Fellowship Plaza is located in the city of Saratoga. A rather wealthy neighborhood, and in this silver town, there are many private nursing homes, and many houses and fancy apartments for the healthy elderly in the lower parts of the hills that surrounds the city. So either before the elderly passes away, or move away from special reason, it would be difficult to have a spot. Since I didn’t want to just wait, for the time being I had entered Liberty Tower which had opened a bit earlier. I really thought that this place was going to be my final resting place.
Around early November we had our interview, and after finishing all the forms, we were told to wait. I thought maybe around January in 2013 we would get a call. But on contrary, on November 10, Susan had called again, saying we could move in around December 18, 2012. Rather surprising news. I didn’t expect the news to come this early.
While I lived in Liberty Tower for about 20 months, 3 people had passed away that I knew. One that made me sad was, one of the church members I knew from my pastor days, started to have dementia, and seems to not hear me even if I greet her. Another person was he had a business but after a hard time, and after a major surgery and his face had become more expressionless. With the dementia, he says something same over and over again. Many of the tenant’s faces have a shadow of loneliness to them. What a pity. Well, seeing that one day, I would become also weak. But as long as I can move, I will meet with people, and encourage young people for the days coming.
Because it was the end of year, there were things to do here and there, and to also the people who wanted to help move would be busy, the moving date was set to 28th of December. On the 18th of December, I went to Susan to receive the keys to the new place. When I used to live in Liberty Tower, I had to be extra careful when I moved around early morning or late night because I worried I would wake my wife. Also because the room was very small, even to invite anyone in. It was so small that the table / kitchen table and the bed were almost next to each other. Not only that, all my books had filled one side of the wall. So living in there was rather tight and cramped. But in Fellowship Plaza, the room had a living room and bedroom. Fellowship Tower is almost double the size of Liberty Tower.
I didn’t want tell anyone to disappoint them about me leaving, so I told on the 27th of me moving. Everyone was surprised and said would miss me. Anyone I missed I revisited them two days later to say the fair-wells.
During the 41 years of our marriage we had moved a lot. After our moving, my daughter came with our grandchildren and said, “This would be dad and mom’s final stopping place” in a rather serious tone. Perhaps she is right. “Fellowship Plaza” would perhaps be the very last place for us to stop. So I would live with a deep purpose daily. In holy life, in living with love of God, I would live as a loyal servant to the Lord.
(January 2013)
|
Epilogue: 20 Months
The Power of Habits