This is Zhu Jinqin, 86 years old, living alone.
She opened an account on Douyin to record her later life living alone.
Image source: TikTok @ Succulent Immortal Pine
How do you spend your days living alone? How to explain the situation to my children? How to think about illness and death? She recorded these thoughts in detail.
This is a vlog of the life of an 86-year-old and the future that each of us will eventually reach.
The following is Grandma Zhu Jinqin's self-statement.
At 86 years old, what is a day like living alone?
I chose to live alone.
I have a son, a daughter, and they are all filial. After my wife died, they were afraid that I would think about things in the old house, so they offered to pick me up and live with them. But I calculated that sons and daughters have their own lives. Go to live at your son's house, take up your granddaughter's space, go to your daughter's house, disturb your daughter's schedule. As soon as I live in the past, everyone's living habits will be disrupted, and it is better for me to live my own quiet life.
Living alone, it is impossible to say that I am not lonely, but what to do, I still try to think of some ways to arrange my life a little fuller.
I woke up after six o'clock in the morning, and when I woke up, I didn't get up, I was lazy, and I was playing with my phone in bed.
The first thing was to open WeChat and send good morning pictures to more than 300 contacts on my phone. The people in the mobile phone are basically my old classmates, old friends, I send them flowers in my garden + some greetings, in the morning I use the mobile phone p map, spend dozens of minutes.
Illustration: Grandma Zhu's good morning WeChat
Some people return, some people don't, and I'm not afraid that others will annoy me. However, for a while, I missed a few people, and my old classmate immediately called me and asked me if I was okay, afraid that something would happen to me.
People my age know that if an active person in a classmate suddenly doesn't speak for a few days, he may receive an obituary in a few days. This kind of WeChat can also be regarded as a way for the elderly to take care of each other, and report safety every day.
After getting up for breakfast and taking medicine, the second important thing is to inspect the garden.
I first liked to raise succulents, more than 100 pots in many times, and now I have a small garden, and I raise even more. Moon season, peony, canna, hydrangea, orange tree, camellia, cactus, triangle plum... There may be twenty or thirty of them. I carried my own water and watered the flowers myself, and I had to run back and forth more than a dozen times.
Then it's about buying groceries, I'm walking slowly now, and when I get home after buying vegetables, it's past ten o'clock.
After coming back, I took a break and called my old colleagues in Qinghai, exchanged news with each other, and talked about their health. When you are older, everyone is a little sick, and they are less worried about communicating with each other. After chatting about the day, I make a simple lunch by myself, sometimes I make more and make dinner.
The next time I set myself two goals, one physical and one brain. Physically, if the weather is good, I go out for a walk, walk slowly, and walk 4,000 steps. If it rains, I play table tennis against the wall and exercise my arm strength, which is about 500 beats.
Mentally, I have a habit of doing Sudoku. I started more than ten years ago, I used to do it in books, now I do it on a tablet, and I have cleared the level to the master level. When people are old, their brains must move more so that they do not stiffen.
In my spare time, I just look at my phone, just like you young people.
There are two main things: one is to help old classmates and teach them to use mobile phones. I am an old classmate who knows more about mobile phones and computers, I will buy things online, chat, post posts, and also make electronic photo albums. When everyone's children were busy, they came to me to solve it, and I told them to prevent telecom fraud and not trust the messy videos on the Internet.
Another one, I quite like to comment on the Internet. I am a fan of women's volleyball for more than forty years, since the 80s of the last century when the Chinese women's volleyball team won five consecutive championships I watched, when Lang Ping was still a player, women's volleyball for so many years, new and old players I can call names, I just can't get used to Weibo now, the people on the headlines are always commenting on the women's volleyball team, and they can't move to give people nicknames. When I saw that kind of personal attack, I replied and told them not to make personal attacks all day long.
Now although I am in my eighties, my love for the women's volleyball team is still there, and the game at night, no matter how late it is live, as long as it is our country, I must watch it. Anyway, it is still very important for people to have an interest, when I don't watch women's volleyball, I look at table tennis and badminton.
In fact, living alone is probably like this, and I am quite happy every day. Every day, I would also call my son and daughter, who was afraid that I would have an accident living alone, and installed monitoring in the corners and corners of the house, and they could know anything.
I think there should be many people of the same age, maybe living with children, and the children are also alone when they go to work. If my life can inspire everyone, that's a good thing.
At my age, it doesn't matter if I have a tumor
Many people watch my videos and think that my body is very good. In fact, I have already had a bunch of problems in me. I had tuberculosis before, found high blood pressure at the age of 39, and then had high blood lipids, diabetes, kidney function was not particularly good, and I had to take a lot of medicine every day.
Now I have a basic view of these diseases, chronic diseases I take medicine and manage carefully. I don't care about the tumor, it's all this age, I pretend not to have it.
In 2020, the examination swept away solid lesions on my pancreas. The doctor recommended that I have a puncture to confirm whether it is benign or malignant.
At the beginning, I was very panicked, pancreatic cancer is the king of cancer, if it is malignant is basically an incurable disease, if the results are not good, then I will be treated or not cured?
As soon as this question came out, my heart was refreshed. I told the doctor that I would not make this diagnosis, just as if I did not know about this tumor. I have lived to be more than eighty years old, and it is almost enough to be able to live a day in style. If the diagnosis is malignant, the burden of family and their own thoughts will be very heavy, and if it is benign, they will worry from time to time and consider the operation. I don't want to think about it, it's good for more than eighty, and some decisions that are not easy to make, just leave it to God.
After thinking about it like this, my mentality is much calmer. I take all the medicines prescribed by the hospital for chronic diseases, and I insist on exercising every day and paying attention to the quality of life. I control the disease I have controlled, and I should not have the lesion that I can't control.
People, living sadly is also a day, happy life is also a day, I still choose to be happy.
My children and I confessed what happened
After my wife left, I began to think about the problem of arranging the aftermath. When he left, he couldn't say a word, and he couldn't explain anything, but I knew everything in his unit and life. But if I leave, my children don't know my colleagues and don't know my arrangements, so I don't want them to be at a loss.
I decided to talk to them about it in person. The main thing is three points, do not salvage, use the cheapest urn, do not memorial service. On the one hand, I don't want to drag my children down on the sick bed; On the other hand, I don't want to suffer at the end of my life. Everything is simple, don't trouble others.
At first, they were both unacceptable. As soon as I opened my mouth, they just said mom, don't say this, refuse to face it. Later, I slowly persuaded that every time I saw them, I would talk about it, and my daughter would gradually accept it.
I made arrangements for property matters, the house was sold, the money was divided equally between my children, I relied on my own pension, medical insurance, should be spent, and I did not save any money.
I brought my daughter and colleagues from my original unit into a group so that they could get to know each other. Some of the people in the group are still working, some have retired, and these old friends of mine know how to go through the process and can help run errands. After I leave, pensions, procedures, they can still help each other. After explaining these things, I was afraid that they would forget the details in the future, so I wrote them all on the paper again and put them away.
My son still can't accept the aftermath, he can't hear me say "death", so he doesn't want to face it. Later, I didn't convince him anymore, and he came to eat with me and chat with me as usual. I kept an envelope in the drawer at home, and it contained an account for my son. A bank card for him, my deposit son and daughter one and a half, so one card per person. Then some files that need to be processed.
After I posted these things on the Internet, many people said that I was open-minded and open-minded, and asked me to say, or you young people have seen too few deaths.
I know at my age that death is a very close thing. The old classmates on WeChat are really becoming fewer, some people just fell and will be gone in two days. I also have a classmate who suddenly said that he had a headache and died suddenly in two days, and he didn't leave a word.
I don't want this, the world is impermanent, and I have to take this step until I am old. Escape can't make this endgame disappear, so why are you always afraid of death and avoid death?
I'm also a medical student. Before doing plague research in Qinghai, I have seen more birth, old age, illness and death, so I also look at death lightly.
People, really take such a trip, instead of taboo this ending, it is better to think straightforwardly, plan ahead, and arrange properly, in order to live a dashing old age.
Planning production
Curated by: jiu | Executive Producer: Feidi
Cover image source: Internet