Your Handprints On My Heart

“The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn’t already know.

 I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned round to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me

 with a smile that lit up her entire being.

 She said, “Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?”

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze.

“Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked.

 She jokingly replied, “I’m here to meet a rich husband,

 get married, and have a couple of kids…”

 “No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

“I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she told me.

 After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the

 next three months, we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this “time machine”

as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

 Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

 At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at

 our football banquet. I’ll never forget what she taught us. She was

 introduced and stepped up to the podium.

 As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, “I’m sorry I’m so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I’ll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell

 you what I know.”

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, “We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop

 playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day.

 You’ve got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.

 We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it! There is a huge difference

 between growing

 older and growing up.

 If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old.

 If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

 Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change.

 Have no regrets.

 The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those

 with regrets.”

She concluded her speech by courageously singing “The Rose.”

She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.

 At the year’s end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died

 peacefully in her sleep.”

This was sent to me by a friend. It is a marvelous story. I have recounted when I went back to get a college degree in 1968 at the almost age of 34 which was darn old in those days. I was one of the first ‘old’ ladies to go there to the community college. In my class after I had been there about one year of taking classes partime due to having two children ages three and seven, a husband and a widowed Mom, I met a 70 year old woman who was in my class. Her name was Margaret Laufer and she was a grandmother and she always wanted a college education. She started college when her husband passed on and she was a darling ‘old’ lady. She spoke with a thick German accent, she was a Holocaust survivor and she excelled in every class she took. It was about four years before she completed the two year Associate Arts degree there with honor and at the graduation; she got up and spoke how her dreams were finally realized. Her speech left not a person with a dry eye and the dean who followed her speech hardly made a dent in anyone’s mind. It was difficult to come after a speech like hers; he was alright with her out shining him. He was proud as we all were.

She and I became buddies. In the classes, I took great notes, at that time there were no computers, and I did it all by hand. She loved my notes, so I Xeroxed them and gave her and a deaf lady my notes to study by.

Once she invited me and my kids to her apartment for tea and cookies and she lived neatly with a man friend in an apartment near the branch of the college we attended. She served us tea in little China cups and had baked cupcakes with icing on them for us. It was a pleasant time and the kids were not bored.

She passed on when she was about almost ninety and she was never forgotten by the ‘youngsters’ like me who had the great luck to meet her in a college class.

It is never too late to learn, to achieve, to do, to come forward to accomplish something new even at eighty something like Rose or seventy something like Margaret or whatever age you are now. I encouraged an almost eighty year old lady in California to attain her dream of ballroom dancing at her age. She excelled and is and was happy that she tried something new in her sad life and she was successful at it.

I saw this saying online. It said “your handprint will be on my heart.” She was referring to a young woman she knew who passed away at fifty-two of an illness. This woman had been instrumental in reaching out to so many with her smile and happiness, that the friend felt her hands on her heart.

We can all feel a ‘handprint’ on our own hearts when we reach out and encourage everyone to prosper in happiness by doing something new for them socially or work wise.

Do it now and your heart and soul will be filled with exuberance and excitement.