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CRABBY OLD MAN..................

When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a small hospital near Tampa,

Florida, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.

Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they

found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that

copies were

made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Missouri. The old man's sole bequest to

posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine

of the St. Louis Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been

made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.

And this little old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now

the

posthumous author of this " anonymous" poem winging across the Internet.



Crabby Old Man

What do you see nurses? ....What do you see?

What are you thinking.....when you're looking at me?

A crabby old man, ...not very wise,

Uncertain of habit ........with far away eyes?

Who dribbles his food.......and makes no reply.

When you say in a loud voice...."I do wish you'd try!"

Who seems not to notice ...the things that you do.

And forever is losing ...........A sock or a shoe?

Who, resisting or not...........lets you do as you will,

With bathing and feeding ...The long day to fill?

Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you see?

Then open your eyes, nurse......you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am ..........As I sit here so still,

As I do all at your bidding, .....and I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of Ten.......with a father and mother,

Brothers and sisters .........who love one another

A young boy of Sixteen ..with wings on his feet

Dreaming that soon now.........a lover he'll meet.

A groom soon at Twenty......my heart gives a leap.

Remembering, the vows......that I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now .......I have young of my own.

Who need me to guide ....And a secure happy home.

A man of Thirty .........My young now grown fast,

Bound to each other .......With ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons ..have grown and are gone,

But my woman's beside me......to see I don't mourn.

At Fifty, once more, .........Babies play 'round my knee,

Again, we know children .......My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me ........My wife is now dead.

I look at the future ...........I shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing young of their own.

And I think of the years...... And the love that I've known.

I'm now an old man.........and nature is cruel.

Tis jest to make old age .....look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles..........grace and vigor, depart.

There is now a stone........where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass ......A young man still dwells,

And now and again ......my battered heart swells

I remember the joys........... I remember the pain.

And I'm loving and living . ...........life over again.

I think of the years ...all too few......gone too fast.

And accept the stark fact........that nothing can last.

> > So open your eyes, people .........open and see.

Not a crabby old man: Look closer....SEE........ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush

aside without looking at the young soul within.....we will all, one day,

be there, too!

Excellent.

Beautiful

Neffy that's a lovely poem, brilliant, and believe me it is so true. Your body gets older, but you are still a young person inside. It's like that cliche - The body can't cash the cheques the brain writes, any more ! To all of you reading this - next time you see an elderly couple getting married, for heaven's sake don't snigger, because they are 'young marrieds' inside, with the full flush of 'young love', and I say God bless them, and good luck. :-4

Lovely words.........and Gill yer so right mate. I sometimes find it so hard to believe I am the age I am (dont you dare ask ok lol) and feel sure a mistake was made on my birth certificate!! I act like a teenager at times and that is because in my head I bloody am!!!I walk along holding hands with my Chris and even have been known to sit on a bench with him and hugged and kissed..........never finking that people would be looking at two middle aged people......na ...Im not old and gawd help anyone who says I am!!!:-5:p;)

Carolly;696574 wrote: Lovely words.........and Gill yer so right mate. I sometimes find it so hard to believe I am the age I am (dont you dare ask ok lol) and feel sure a mistake was made on my birth certificate!! I act like a teenager at times and that is because in my head I bloody am!!!I walk along holding hands with my Chris and even have been known to sit on a bench with him and hugged and kissed..........never finking that people would be looking at two middle aged people......na ...Im not old and gawd help anyone who says I am!!!:-5:p;)


AGREE WITH EVERY WORD YOU SAY CAROL.

my mums friends used to say " i still think im 18 " or whatever age and i'd think, dont be stupid, how can that happen but now im there myself. i go to a party and theres good music playing, im on the dance floor in a flash, i used to stay on there all night but now after a few minits, im staggering towards me chair, out of breath, wishing i had a cup of tea instead of the voddy and coke i've got in front of me .

At first glance, we have an old man who might have re-drafted "Crabby Old Woman" and left his version hanging around after his departure - or, of course, a Crabby Old Woman who did the same to his original. That doesn't account for the fact that the disseminator of the piece makes reference to its publication in "the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the North Ireland Association for Mental Health" in one case and "the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the St. Louis Association for Mental Health" in the other, or that both have ended up as slide presentations. I hate coincidences.

That implies to me that there was at a least no genuine original for either the Crabby Old Woman or the Crabby Old Man. I would hesitate to guess at the truth beyond that. Oh, what the heck, let me guess anyway. How can anyone in their right mind think the original was written by any resident of a geriatric ward, it's beyond plain common sense.

Here's the alternative, equally squalid, morbid, gloopy version from the female perspective. Note the similarity between the two. I feel sullied just posting in this thread at all.The Old Woman

When an old lady died in the geriatric ward of a small hospital near Dundee, Scotland, it was believed that she had nothing left of any value.

Later, when the nurses were going through her meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Ireland.

The old lady's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the North Ireland Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on her simple, but eloquent, poem

And this little old Scottish lady, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this "anonymous" poem winging across the Internet:

Crabby Old Woman

What do you see, nurses? What do you see? What are you thinking When you're looking at me?

A crabby old woman, Not very wise, Uncertain of habit, With faraway eyes?

Who dribbles her food And makes no reply When you say in a loud voice, "I do wish you'd try!"

Who seems not to notice The things that you do, And forever is losing A stocking or shoe?

Who, resisting or not, Lets you do as you will, With bathing and feeding, The long day to fill?

Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you see? Then open your eyes, nurse, You're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am As I sit here so still, As I do at your bidding, As I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of ten With a father and mother, Brothers and sisters, Who love one another.

A young girl of sixteen With wings on her feet Dreaming that soon now A lover she'll meet

A bride soon at twenty, My heart gives a leap, Remembering the vows That I promised to keep

At twenty-five now, I have young of my own, Who need me to guide And a secure happy home.

A woman of thirty, My young now grown fast, Bound to each other With ties that should last.

At forty, my young sons Have grown and are gone, But my man's beside me To see I don't mourn.

At fifty once more, Babies play round my knee, Again we know children, My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, My husband is dead, I look at the future, I shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing Young of their own, And I think of the years And the love that I've known.

I'm now an old woman And nature is cruel; 'Tis jest to make old age Look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles, Grace and vigor depart, There is now a stone Where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass A young girl still dwells, And now and again, My battered heart swells.

I remember the joys, I remember the pain, And I'm loving and living Life over again.

I think of the years All too few, gone too fast, And accept the stark fact That nothing can last.

So open your eyes, people, Open and see, Not a crabby old woman; Look closer . . see ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an old person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within........... we will all, one day, be there, too!

PLEASE SHARE THIS POEM. IT'S SOMETHING WE ALL NEED TO READ!



Let me try to take the history of this back a bit. This is from the The Ottawa Citizen of August 11, 1995 by their columnist Dave Brown, and was followed by an identical copy. It traces the printed version of the story back to the 1970s and even then it was being touted as the work of a resident of a geriatric home:As a certified skeptic I'm not easy to spook, but a clipping fell out of an envelope as I opened my mail at my desk Thursday morning. The effect was a shock, and a kick to my pompous butt that made me open my eyes.

While visiting my mother in hospital Wednesday evening, I became impatient and scolding. She had a stroke in May and it left her with garbled speech. It seems her functions that process incoming information are also damaged. She is often frustrated. The result is her worst nightmare. Until her retirement 20 years ago, she was a career medical secretary in hospitals. She expressed sympathy for aged people tied into chairs at nursing stations. Now she has become one. She sits for long stretches with her eyes focused at infinity and I often wonder what, if anything, she's thinking about. The chair is wheeled and she can move by pulling with her feet. The wheels can be pulled over her feet and cause damage, so she must wear shoes.

Wednesday she kept kicking the shoes off. My frustration must have showed. Two busy nurses arrived and went about making her more comfortable. They got a broad smile when they arrived and when they left. I didn't get a smile when I arrived and was now facing a scowl. I cut the visit short.

Thursday's clipping was from a reader who found it recently while cleaning out the apartment of an elderly woman who had died. It had apparently been of some comfort to the dead woman and was sent in to let me know that. It bore a picture of a much younger me, from one of these columns that ran in the late 1970s. It was believed written by an Ottawa woman who died in a nursing home in the '70s. Nobody claimed authorship after it appeared in the paper.

Don't let me kill the thread, please. Maybe it's true that someone can extract some merit from something that maudlin, who am I to say otherwise.

What I have against both versions though is that the Crabby poem is entirely anti-geriatric. There's not one word in the entire piece that emphasizes their powerful lust for existence. I'm more in favour of old people being portrayed as still burning with life if it's done well. Here's one I've even recited, I love the imagery and direct challenge to the reader:



AT THE OLD LADIES' HOME by: Ruth Guthrie Harding (1882-)

There in a row of chairs upon the porch

I saw them, women alien from the world,

Set in a niche to watch the world go by:

A few, born saints ... but some had outworn sin;

Sisters at last, from having done with life.

Here Joan of Arc, grown past her soldier-dream,

And Mariamne, spared her Herod's wrath,

Forgetting Herod, gossiped for an hour;

While calm Francesca, once knowing Paolo's love,

Sat knitting peaceful in the noonday sun,

And Nicolette, with Aucassin long gone,

Made painful writing with a wrinkled hand.

"Ah, let me die," I prayed, "before the glow

Shall leave my body, and before my tears

Shall buy me patience; take me while I feel

The lure-of-things that blesses with its hurt -

Dear God, give me not age!" (For I would keep

You in my heart of hearts ... for whose sad eyes

These lines are set, O Dearest ... to the last.)

Just then, among the many faces there,

I glimpsed a face most delicate and pale

And very lovely with that wistfulness

In which the shadows of long sorrow lie;

Meeting my look, she smiled, and, with that smile,

Somehow the lilacs by the iron fence,

The plumed grass brushing low across the path,

Brought back to me an afternoon in May

And a sweet garden where I sometimes played

When I fared forth in gingham pinafore:

I saw Another (dead so many years,

Her name I could not in that hour recall):

Old she had been as ashes in a jar

She kept upon a high, old-fashioned chest

In an old-fashioned room in her still house ...

Now I remembered with what passionate warmth

A cheek had once been pressed against my cheek,

What frail and trembling arms had lifted me

To touch that silvery dust within the jar.

Perhaps it is God's will I shall grow old

And none may read beneath my quietness ...

Gardens in May, or any memory

Of you! And yet for very shame to-night

I change my prayer, and ask for strength to live.

"At the Old Ladies' Home" is reprinted from Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916. Ed. William Stanley Braithwaite. New York: Laurence J. Gomme, 1916.

I love old people (yeah you too spotty)

I remember my grandmother at 95 still telling me stories about my dad as a wee boy.

Old people are chalk full of experiences.

minks;697019 wrote: I love old people (yeah you too spotty)

I remember my grandmother at 95 still telling me stories about my dad as a wee boy.

Old people are chalk full of experiences.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... old119.xml has far more fire to it than the Crabby "accept the stark fact that nothing can last" sentiment. Oldest man in the world turns 112 [...] sprightly Mr Tanabe said he has no plans to die and told reporters that he "wants to live indefinitely" [...] insists on drinking milk and taking a stroll around the neighbourhood every day. There's nothing like that in that piece that gets "distributed to every nurse in the hospital" - which I'm sure is true of notice boards at homes and wards all over the Western world, sadly.