Wednesday, April 17, 2002
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Wednesday, April 17, 2002 |
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Friendship Center helps so many elderly persons If you want to get a fight started at my house, say something bad about the Fayette County Senior Services Friendship Center! This wonderful place has saved my 88-year-old mother from staring at the same walls and having no one to talk with during the hours my family works. She loves the Friendship Center and our family loves the way Mother has responded to the care, concern and happy faces she has come to know in the last three years she has attended. Three years have passed since I drove to Nashville, Tenn., and under the advice of her physician moved Mother away from her home of 48 years, her volunteer work, social activities, traveling buddies and most traumatic of all, her church. Then to top if all off, I sold her car. She was frantic, I took all the blame and we were all in tears. But, due to her failing health it had to be done. Let me tell you, it broke my heart, the first morning she woke up in my home, she said, "I have laid here with my eyes closed, hoping when I opened them I would still be in my own home. I don't know why you have taken me away from my home." But, what else was I to do? And now that she was here, what was she to do? Through the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce, I had come to know Andy Carden from Fayette Senior Services. I had heard good things about the Friendship Center and after a home visit from Kate Calcaterra, Mother made her first trip to the Center. And, as they say, the rest is history. Mother may not remember everyone's name at the Center, or the day they plan to go to the ballet, or out to eat, but her entire attitude changed. Thanks to the wholesome interaction between the Center employees and volunteers, she accepted her new place in our home. Years ago, I was a social worker and visited the elderly in their homes, and I could tell your stories that would curl your hair. Most of these people lived miles from neighbors, spent weeks without visitors and for some, years passed without hearing from children. They all needed some form of assistance and they all stared at the walls around them. The Friendship Center and the Fayette Senior Services cannot answer all needs, but many of the people they do help theoretically wear the same shoes as those I visited years ago. Many good deeds are being done for so many people, and my family will always be grateful to the staff at the Friendship Center. Betsy Robinson Fayetteville
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