Memories of a bitter man
Ifound a photo of a bitter old man among my mothers photos yesterday. I couldn’t publish his photo here out of respect of any living relatives to him, but I can tell the story.
These memories goes back to the time when I was growing up. We lived in an apartment building at first floor and besides us there lived an old man (Mr Larsson) that was very bitter and sometimes mean. He yelled at all the kids playing outside and threatened them with his cane, shouting to them from the window.
He wasn’t popular and in fact so impopular that his own growned up son stopped visiting him. Which of course made him even more bitter.
He did enjoy to scare us kids. One time when the light were off in the entrance hall and I rounded the corner, he jumped forward screaming at me - I almost pee’d my pants. I was very afraid of the darkness and that didn’t make it better.
It did have positive side effects - it made me practise my singing. From that day I was afraid of going around that corner in the entrance, so I always were singing loudly, because if something happened to me, the others should hear my singing suddenly stop and wondering why. What an idea! *lol*
As a grown up I’m sure that he just wanted to “be funny” and had no thought of how a little child could react to this scare he performed. He didn’t know how to properly make contact. Maybe his own childhood had been bad? He obviously were unhappy about his life. Maybe he was envious of our lifes?
I remember the most awful smell of him. Ingrained dirt, pee and moist snuff (running from corner of his mouth) mixed to a lovely “hold your breath” kind of smell.
The few times he was nice, he gave me a pear or a little sugarfree dark chocolate. I thanked him politely, but never could eat them because of the smell of something very old and moist snuff. I went around the nearest corner and throwed it away. I can feel the smell even today…
My Mom worked in the home-help service for elderly and didn’t normally go to people so close of her own home, but since every one else always got into quarrel with him and refused to go to him anymore, she did.
It was no picnic. He accused her of stealing his money among other things, luckily she had proof of that she hadn’t. Actually she had paid some minor things for him with her own money! He was difficult to deal with, but he couldn’t walk over her. She got self-confidence and ability to bite off if needed, so he were forced to back off.
There were no wonder that he were smelly, because he never wanted to change clothes. They had to be two persons to get the clothes off him by force and then cook his underwear very carefully to get them clean.
When he ended up ill in hospital in the end, he got no visitors other than my Mom and my two older sisters. They were older than me and both worked in hospital care at that time.
He was alone at the bitter end.
His earlier life and the way it ended, really was so sad - and unnecessary. Why being such a bitter old man when he could have had a much better life than that?
I don’t know what he wanted or expected from life, but he could at least have kept the contact with his son. He could have done the best he could with his situation. Instead he actually did choose to have this miserable alone life.
He was the total opposite of my Mom. Yes, he did have some difficulties in his life, but not even half of what my Mom has suffered and she is still laughing, despite the fact that she now is more ill than he ever was.
We all have a choice to do when it comes to our own lifes. The one that suffer and lose most from a negative attitude is the one that’s keeping that negative attitude.
No one is going to serve you a good life on a silver plate.
YOU are responsible for your own life, to make it worth living. It’s as simple as that. Or hard, you choose!
I won’t end up alone, bitter, with ingrained dirt, pee and moist snuff, regretting that I didn’t live my life the best way I could!
♥ I LIVE, ENJOY… LOVE… LIFE!
NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Monday Memories-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)
Trackbacks, pings, and comment links are accepted and encouraged!
Visit other participants
Monday Memories in Technorati
