My Story: Making Sure I Stay In Contact With Friends and Family

By Saniya Ghanoui —

SD discusses how her relationships were impacted as she aged.

Transcript:

OBOS Today: So, I guess another question I have is how have your relationships changed as you’ve gotten older? I know you mentioned that you want to stay active and continue—you want to be able to vacation, but have you seen aging really come into play in terms of your everyday life? 

SD: Um. No, no, not really um the friends that I have—They’re, like in two camps, you know.  

One are active types and we go on, we see them and we do more active things like snowshoeing and hiking and things like that and the others not so much you know we just kind of hang around and go to the beach or something like that, so no actually that was always the case with those people.  

That hasn’t changed during aging and the people that are not so active and enjoy more sedentary things they’ve just kind of always been like that and they’re still like that. And the ones that are active actually do often say like, “Gee I hope I can still do this”.  

 So, there’s a little more awareness that oh this takes a little bit of effort, but no those relationships haven’t really changed we just want to continue as you know, as we have been. 

OBOS Today: That’s great to hear. 

SD: So, I will say, but it is interesting that I come from a family, where they weren’t very active—Well my parents, they weren’t— There were other people who were active, and I have always been a marvel to my now very elderly mother when— whenever she saw me going even when I was young— 

Going to exercise or not to exercise, but like a physical thing, “Oh, are you sure you want to do that? Aren’t you tired?” Like yeah, I’m a little tired, but I’ll feel better if I do it. So, I think my family sort of looked at me like an anomaly that you know like, what are you doing? 

OBOS: How, how do you think the— watching your mother age has impacted your vision of aging? 

SD: Well, she’s all there—all her marbles are there, but her—she has many physical issues. Some that she would have developed anyway, you know, some that are just unlucky, and you just get these things. 

But absolutely, I do think if she had led a more active lifestyle, these later years would have been better. There’s no question in my mind just no question. So, that’s a motivator.