Royal Albert Tea

"She was heartbroken. We thought we were going to lose her to love sickness," says Nell. "He was very good looking."
"Like Joe?" asks M.
Nell looks across at her aged husband. "Oh, he was good looking but this man was special."
We laugh. Joe shrugs his shoulders and sips his tea.

This is a favourite way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon: drinking tea from Royal Albert China, nibbling Dutch treats and being regaled by Nell and Joe's stories of yester year. "It's so nice that you kids come and see us," she says. "When I was young I didn't like old people."

Nell launches into her next story: "Once at church there was this old man who couldn't hear and he asked me to find the song in the song book for him. And so I did, but I found the wrong one for him. He couldn't hear that he was singing the wrong song. We young people laughed so hard we had to leave the church." She pauses. "It was funny then but not very nice."

"And now you can't hear," says M speaking louder for Nell to catch his words.
"I know," Nell says. "I spent $3,000 on a hearing aid I don't like to use."
"Yes," adds Joe, "she hears much better now that it lies on the kitchen counter."
We laugh and, after 60 plus years of marriage, Nell lets the comment go.

Joe takes the gap and starts to tell us of life in the slow lane of old age. At 91 there are a lot of things that he has had to let go and can't do anymore. Nell jumps in and explains how a caregiver comes in once a week to help Joe bathe.

"Even if he baths today, and the caregiver comes tomorrow, she will bath him again. You know," Nell continues, "where I come from, things were a little different. We bathed once a year at Christmas." We all laugh again.

I look at the old woman across the table from me and I search the folds of her skin for the youthful dark-haired beauty she claims to have been. I picture her as a girl growing up dirt poor in rural Norway. "By the time I was eleven, I lost all my teeth," she will say and Joe will sympathetically nod his head. And yet, she tells her stories of poverty with gusto and oodles of humour. Nell loves to laugh.

"God gave you a back-bone not a wish-bone," she often says. And I know that philosophy of life explains her transition from serfdom poverty in Norway to a comfortable middle-class retirement in Canada serving tea in her best tea pot. With, of course, oodles of stories in between which fill the 94 years of her life.

Other than the tea and treats and the sense of family we enjoy on our visits to Nell and Joe, I value the life lessons I glean from their stories, lessons on how to live life well, right up to the end.