Maybe all this dithering for so many years about where to have a Senior Center, and predictably the resistance to the most recent site, among many, many “resistances” to a whole host of sites, could be our collective unconscious resistance to the notion of our own inevitable aging process and death, and the aging process and death of the people that we love.

Maybe it’s time to slightly change the focus. Not on where to have the ultimate location for a Senior Center (not that I don’t think that that is a good idea), but rather where to house all the senior services in one place, how to make sure that the Newburyport Council on Aging is always properly funded, and how to make sure that the Director of the Newburyport Council on Aging is appropriately compensated for working 24/7.

This “new” approach, actually didn’t come out of my “brilliant brain.” It came out of a conversation with Newburyport Councilor at Large, and pretty much close neighbor, Katie Ives.

Her thinking was that even (due to some miracle–my injection) if we do agree on a site for the Newburyport Senior Center, it’s going to take quite a while to fund it, and quite some time for it to become a reality.

In the mean time, something has to be done to house all the services and activities in one central location.

Hear, hear. Good for Katie Ives. An actual rational thought process.

My.

Not everybody has children, but everyone in Newburyport, MA does share the same fate, no matter what a “Paris Hilton” world might tell us. No matter how distracting the “flash and gash” of our culture might be.

Why wait until your last minute, or the last minute of someone you love, to realize that the services of the Council on Aging are applicable to everyone. Period.

And yes, we are all going to age, and if we are “lucky” grow old, and our loved ones are going to need information and support and just plain old help, even if we think that we might magically skip the aging process in the all together.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport