With every Council on Aging program and activity shut down, many Harvard seniors are having to find new ways to stay active and connected to the community. So I phoned three COA regulars who typically spend time at Hildreth House for meals, activities, and special events. I must admit, a part of me thought I would be listening to their complaints and concerns. Instead, they gave me inspiration. Based on my small sample, I concluded that while older seniors may be in the “most vulnerable” group in a pandemic when it comes to physical illness, they are at very low risk to their mental and emotional health. Along with wisdom, perhaps age also brings perspective, resilience, and inner resources to weather a crisis.
Martha Guptill
Martha Guptil. (Photos by Jen Manell)
Martha Guptill, who lives alone and has no children, said she’s doing her best to deal with the situation and believes, “It has a lot to do with a person’s outlook.” Like everyone else, she worries, but, she said, “One has to keep living.”
She gets out once a week, to go to the dump or buy cat food. She laughed, saying you can’t tell a cat to be glad for whatever it gets to eat—they let you know if it’s not to their liking. She has wonderful neighbors who send over meals: “I’ve been adopted,” she said. “I’m not losing any weight,” she joked. “The two teenage girls bake delicious cookies.”
Guptill said she misses her friends at Hildreth House a lot and also special events like the St. Patrick’s Day lunch. Until the end of last year she had served lunches at Hildreth House for eight-and-a-half years, volunteering for the first part of that time and enrolling in the tax workoff program for the last four. After years of being on the serving end, she decided she wanted to come to lunch as a guest.
Increased reading, TV, and jigsaw puzzles are filling some of the void. She’s swapping puzzles with a neighbor. She’s finding comfort in prayer. Gutpill said she can do without technology and doesn’t need the expense of a computer or internet. She limits the time she spends watching news programs; she wants to keep up-to-date, but doesn’t want to hear the same things over and over. Guptill said she is looking forward to sitting out on her deck off the garage out back. Those same cookie-baking teenagers are coming over on the next warm day to set up the outdoor furniture.
Guptill has a cat for company. Recently she was concerned to hear that pets spread the virus. But she now believes that was false information, and she has no worries about the cat curling up on her lap. She mentioned that she is a bit worried about money. She says she’s always been careful and does not run up bills. But she is exploring options if the time comes that she needs to make financial changes.
Bruce Dolimount
Bruce Dolimount.
“Terrific” was Bruce Dolimount’s answer when I asked him how he was doing, and the more he talked, the more I was convinced he was telling the truth. And I learned one reason he’s doing well is that Dolimount’s thoughts and energies are directed outward, toward the things he can do for other people and the town in general.
A committed member of the weekly men’s coffee at Hildreth House, Dolimount and a couple of other men wanted to see if they could use Zoom for their meetings. Council on Aging Director Debbie Thompson set things up, and the small group practiced before inviting the larger membership that Wednesday. Several men participated and Dolimount said he thinks attendance will grow. Dolimount said he was anxious to establish a virtual meeting because he is concerned about some of the men he used to chat with who are less healthy, and without their email, he hasn’t been able to check in with them.
Confinement is difficult for him, Dolimount said. As a business executive, he traveled widely and his time was flexible, so he’s finding it hard to have to stay put. His answer is to get out and go for a drive around town in his truck, seeing how everything is going. Dolimount is a cemetery commissioner and he stops in at Bellevue Cemetery to check things out. He said he doesn’t see many cars during his town tours, and he’s the only “senile senior riding around in a truck.”
Having spent 10 years on the Council on Aging board, his time is now up because of term limits. He plans to join the Friends of the COA so he can help with fundraising. Lately he has been spending a lot of time thinking about the proposed Phase 2 expansion of Hildreth House and how that can become a reality. He said if the town won’t support it, there may be ways entrepreneurs in town could step in; “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“You can’t stop living because this is happening,” said Dolimount. On the contrary, it seems that he himself has new energy.
Anu Pirn
Anu Pirn with her husband Rein.
Anu Pirn misses her whole routine as a senior—lunches, activities, and exercise classes sponsored by the COA. As a volunteer, serving lunch at Hildreth House on Thursdays was part of that routine. And she and her husband, Rein, are committed members of the aerobics class. Over the years when so many friends moved away from town, the COA became the couple’s social life, said Pirn. Even now she is so grateful for the COA and the reassurance it offers.
“But I’m faring pretty darn well,” Pirn said. The Pirns say they have wonderful neighbors, and they have also been “adopted” by a volunteer. A nephew lives in Andover and has offered to help anytime. So far they haven’t needed his help, but he did come to pick up something his aunt had baked for him.
While the routine is different from what it was, she and Rein are walking every day. She watches only a little bit of news, reads two Estonian newspapers, and works on jigsaw puzzles. Connecting by phone with family and friends here and in Europe has become her new social life.
She had to cut our conversation short to watch a YouTube broadcast. Her daughter, a church youth coordinator in Chicago, was about to give a prayer service.
