Continue To Invest In You

Continue to invest in the most important element of your estate. You. As we get older, many people should and do check your estate values and invest to insure our retirement years. Young people do not think when they are young about their retirement times. They are immature and think they will be old far from now and what is in the present is more important. We as seniors know we may need the money for care later in our older years. As mentioned in the first line of this story, the most important element of your estate is you and your family. As said in Ecclesiastes, “times of parting often come too soon.” It is hard as seniors to think about that and when I do, I think this and it is almost funnier than sad. I think, “How will I get out of that box when the lid is down?” Silly thought and then, I put it out of my mind and think I will not let the parting come too soon. I will enjoy what I have before me now, do my best to be kind to all I meet, write my stories, love my children and grandchildren and of course my husband of fifty-six years and almost three years of courting months. We went together for two years and nine months before marrying and the anniversary of that first date is almost upon me. It is on October 12th and I always laugh and say that “Columbus discovered America on that day and I discovered Jerry then too.” Life changes upon these meetings and never is the same for us. For our first date, we went to a night club/restaurant place called Gabriels.There was a floor show and it featured singers who were not well known, but became popular later on. It also had little known comedians and some went on to become popular years later. We saw one called Jackie Vernon and a singer named Jerry Vale. Both obtained fame and we were happy we saw them in their beginning years. I collected Jerry Vale’s records because I loved him and his voice and I had seen him early on in my courtship days with my Jerry. Six months ago, I found on the Internet a CD of Jerry Vale’s most requested songs. I purchased it and love to hear the songs. It makes me think about those early days in our learning to know each other. Five decades later, they still make me remember those days. We often look back in our lives of happy times and think if we really appreciated the times or just remember them as passing days. There is an advertisement online for a house of worship. It says “doors to Heaven are open. So are ours.” I really do not want to go there yet, the Heaven part. There is much to still do here and people are living longer, so they can attain many of their desires.Someone in Israel or it may be here is living to the age of about 112 and he Is being included in the Guinness Book and he had a hard life, because he is a Holocaust survivor and he is wonderful and still has his wits. He was asked what he likes to eat and he replied, " I had no food then, so all food is good." When I was a little girl, old people sat around, ate their meals, did household necessary chores, maybe went to the movies, visited family and did not much of anything else. They were not told to exercise or use their mind other than reading the newspaper or some borrowed books from the free libraries. Now we old folks exercise, travel, dance, golf, eat out in restaurants, write, have art hobbies, some still work out of necessity or to keep active, and believe it or not, still have fun. We go to the theater, to the ballgames and everything else important to us. When my son was Bar Mitzvah in 1978, my father-in-law was about eighty-eight years of age and he was able to take part in the synagogue service that Saturday morning and was proud to do so; even though he had trouble walking up to the area, and we were proud too to have him there. When my youngest grandson attains the thirteen years age for his Bar Mitzvah, I hopefully will be there at age eighty-four and my husband will be eighty-eight. If we are fortunate, we will be participating in this event at those advanced ages. I have a friend whose mom at age almost ninety- three is participating in her granddaughter’s wedding this coming weekend. What a joy for her, for the granddaughter and for her mom and dad We never heard of people attaining those ages when I was a kid. There are more healthcare opportunities for us now, for advanced procedures to stay well longer and hopefully we have the insurance to pay for it or our own resources. We try to take care of our bodies, and know our cholesterol totals like we know our cellphone numbers. We have good and caring doctors to help us survive. My dad waited for his doctor to return from a month long vacation and therefore he delayed too long to get care. If he had not, I am sure he would have survived past seventy-two years of age, because he would have received the help he needed. He was one of those whose parting came too soon. Take care of yourself and do not procrastinate too long if you think something is wrong. Go somewhere to get the care you need and deserve and not go to the open door of Heaven yet; you have a long time to make the trip. Enjoy the trip here and make the journey as happy as you can. Continue to invest in this special person-YOU. elita sohmer clayman