I used to run an art store, which means I managed not only my young staff, but about a hundred customers daily. And by “manage” I do not mean that I simply led the guests through the store to their merchandise, or scheduled and trained my staff. That’s too easy. I listened. I listened to my young staff’s heralds of daily frustrations and elations, and to the visiting artists’ notions of sometimes not fitting into the world “the others” have created. Some I grew very close to sat in my makeshift office for hours, dissecting the world, never really buying anything.

Of this last group I entertained a few elderly women who found the opportunity to create art a godsend in their late years. Of them, one was boisterous and full of life, with an infectious smile and a true sense that her final years on this earth are meant for LIVING, with a little celebratory nip every night and a fantastic bravado each morning as she ventures onto the road. “What the hell, you live!” she says after getting me all worked up with smiles, reveling in her latest ventures. “And you have to care, too. Sometimes we’re so self-absorbed in life that the need to care comes too late.”

The other of these two women, physically frail, was no less brilliant in her way. It seems that these elderly women (like most elderly people I’ve met) have a craving to share their wisdom with the world, if only they could borrow an eager ear.

This thin, gaunt woman didn’t walk robustly, like my other friend, and impressed me that her life was waning. Our conversations were routine at first – what the doctor said today about her weak heart, how she’s painting as a gift for her adult grandchildren and their children, who live 200 miles away, how she HAS TO walk to my store to get away from the circle of opinions at her retirement home, which she sees as a world within this world which she must be relieved of, if only for a few hours.

She would pull out a beautiful piece of prose she’s written, which she always intended to publish somewhere, and she read aloud inconspicuously, to me and any customers mulling at a safe distance; prose infected with mercy and longing, pleading with any listener to find joy in living, for aging is wrought with many pains, foremost the pain of being alone in a room with no one to care for nor to know you’re there. Just the idea that she shares her heart with me, and with those ten feet away listening from the corners of their ears, chokes me up. I wish I could share that wisdom with the world so that the world may see what’s important, so that life is not wasted.

Then I think that maybe insights are for the aged; you and I are too inexperienced to know what to do with insight anyway. There’s a paradox in there somewhere. As she packs her shoulder bag she pulls out a board of canvas on which she has painted a beautiful folksy figure, a woman posed before a credenza with hands folded and head notched slightly to one side, as if someone was there with my friend to pose, and she offers it to me as a gift for some of the painting supplies I’ve helped her afford. She’s giving me her final legacy, her immortality and usefulness, and we hug. I assure her that I’ll hang it with the others she’s handed me on a pillar in my store, above her name. And I assure her that if someone offers, I’ll get her a fair deal for it (she needs the money). She shakes as she reaches up to kiss me, asks me to give her love to my staff, and she leaves, in a sense triumphant. She, for a moment, felt a purpose.

We were taught not to care early in life. As children we loved and trusted deeply. We hugged our friends and family, forgave them for any error, as humans err, knowing it was not the superficial acts but the heart that was the true test of man. Then society crept in as soon as we became self-conscious, letting us know that we were being hurt and should not stand for it. Forgive once, then get them out of your life – that’s society’s message. And we  learn that there are truly malicious people in the world, without conscience, who should be avoided lest they prey on us. So it’s not our fault we hide, at times, from the world; we would rather err on the side of better judgment. You won’t burn your hand ten times on the same stove.

I listened to the “kids” (ages 18-25) that worked for me. Broken families are always the Topic du Jour; trying to come to terms with parents’ selfishness or abuse of them (or each other) – years spent searching for their own gratification at the expense of their children’s’ emotional growth. These beautiful young men and women often spill tears when they delve to a certain level, unable to control the emotions. And I listen…”my mom is so selfish and never cared for anyone but herself,” “She’s had it hard and never had a chance to mother me,” “My dad thought it was best to leave us and find his own way, which I guess he had to do,” “I’ll never trust another man again,” “I can’t find a girl who cares about me for what I believe in – you can’t share your interests with anyone because they just don’t care.”

Here are the two extremes of our world – old and young; old imparting wisdom that no one will hear, young searching for some quick answers to heal already very deep wounds. And I stand, at the cusp of late-life, having raised adults and buried the elderly, trying just to listen and absorb. I do CARE for them, and so do you, if you’re human. It’s just that we’ve learned not to care. We have to change this. We are all in it together.