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12/09/2022 10:04 AMLiving at the Landing of North Haven senior living center is not a signal of the final days of one’s life, but only another forward motion in a long life that has no definite end point, according to Judy Bram.
“I question what some of these people do when they move into a community like this. My father used to say, ‘the waiting room to die.’ Do some people feel that about these kinds of places? I look at it as a stepping stone in my life,” Judy says.
Judy’s steps in life began when was born in Manhattan and raised in Westchester County. After studying for a year at Boston University, she returned to her home state, got engaged, and finished her degree at New York University. She would go on to marry three different men and hold multiple jobs, including as a teacher and speech therapist.
“Through my trials and tribulations of three marriages, I raised four children, and I was a housewife for part of the time, and then when my kids got a little older, I did go and work. I had several jobs, mostly in sales,” Judy says.
Throughout much of her life, she resided in Connecticut, but it was after her children had all grown up and she traveled around the planet that she and her husband decided to find warmer weather and less rain in Arizona.
“At one point in my life, I needed, for physical and medical reasons, to go to a drier climate. Living in Connecticut most of my adult and married life, we visited Arizona and decided it was the place that would help me with my condition,” Judy says. “We remained there for 18 years. We lived in Tucson and had a lot of friends there. My husband started to have signs with dementia, and it got to a point when I realized that I could put him in a facility out there, but I would be alone. All my family lives on the East Coast, so I made a decision.”
That decision was to find a place like the Landing, finding a place for her independence. Her own apartment, her own relationships with community members, all while knowing her husband would be safe in the memory care facility where he needed to be. And ultimately, at 82 years old, it is still the place where she can simply live yet another chapter in life.
“The Landing seems to have suited my purpose. The wonderful thing is that I have found my family again, and my family is so happy that I’m back here with them, and we’ve been doing a lot of things together.”
At the Landing, Judy enjoys a variety of activities, which include engaging in her lifelong love for music. She is a member of the center’s Senior Songbirds chorus, through which she carries on her family’s background in the performing arts.
“We put on a show in the fall and that was a lot of songs of memories of way-back-when type of music. Now we’re planning and working on a Christmas program. I’ve been in choirs and choruses, and I come from a long line of family singers and hoofers. So music is a very, very big part of my life,” Judy says. “In my relaxation, I have a double keyboard-chord electric organ in my apartment, and if I want to lose myself, which I can very easily do, I just sit down. I either create or just play, and enjoy myself.”
Along with her interest in etymology, Judy is also a movie buff, watching a variety of genres, including foreign films, on streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, but is additionally an eager attendant of the Landing’s theater and the films they screen. Either way, she doesn’t mind watching the same films time and time again, knowing that older films are among the best.
“I love to take a trip down memory lane. They showed part one of Gone With the Wind, and we’re still waiting for part two!”
Throughout her travels around the globe, no other places on Earth struck a deep chord with her than Australia and New Zealand, where around 25 years ago, she was able to appreciate something unusual compared to today in the former country.
“The enlightenment I felt going to Australia and New Zealand, I saw an interaction between mother and child, grandmother and grandchild, father and son, unlike anything we have in this country. These kids don’t backtalk to their parents. There was a respectfulness of the generations,” she says. “We didn’t have that back then when our children were growing up, and we certainly don’t have it now.”
For Judy, not only do too many children not appreciate the people who came before them, but they are especially not appreciating the things around them, unlike what she again saw in the two Oceanic nations.
“There was an appreciation of literature, culture, opera, museums,” Judy says. “[Here], you drive down the street, how many kids do you see outside playing? Where are they? They’re not sitting inside pouring through a history book.”
Rather, she sees that too many kids are inside staring at their phones when a world full of recreation and camaraderie is out there waiting for them.
“There would need to be a metamorphosis of change that could create children to understand the need to gather together to play. Nobody entertained us, we entertained ourselves.”
From childhood to being an octogenarian at the Landing, Judy still stresses the importance of staying in the moment, having respect for those around you, and appreciating all that one can, regardless of age. Life doesn’t end just because you’ve hit old age.
“I once was in a group of people, and the question given to them was, ‘if you were as healthy as you are right now, would you want to live past 100?'. And most people said, ‘No. I’ve lived my life.’ That is something I would never have said. If someone says, ‘How long are you going to be here?’ I don’t look at it as my last place.”
To nominate someone for Person of the Week, email Aaron Rubin at a.rubin@shorepublishing.com.