Christmas morning, my 77th, I sat on the side of the bed feeling weighed down by a peculiar sadness. I say peculiar because I couldn’t define it. It wasn’t loneliness. I’ve been alone many Christmases. It was something else that I couldn’t place.
I’d spent musical Christmases singing to nursing home patients, school children, and incarcerated men and women. Their presence was sweet and satisfying, like a good wine on the back of the tongue. I’d spent Christmas in an ashram in India, enthralled with the magic of the people and the heat. Christmas in temples, churches, and spiritual retreats left me swooning in the magic of sacred music. In each place, there was light in the faces of the people, a brightness. I dare say, a tenderness.
I sipped my coffee, chewed on a waffle, and considered this.
As a child, I received splendid gifts on Christmas morning: a toy nurse kit that included a stethoscope, a miniature microscope, a dollhouse, and paper dolls with cut-out paper clothes. My brothers received model airplanes and warships. It feels like I can still smell the glue. My sister received a full-sized doll as large as a three-year-old. Candy canes and oranges came in Grandaddy’s bulky packages of fruit, nuts, and other goodies. Eating the contents of those packages never gave me a bellyache, which meant I was well enough to ride my first two-wheel bike with my father walking beside me. The gifts made me happy; they gave me pleasure. But the love gave me joy.
Defining joy,Merriam-Webster says, “…a feeling of great happiness or pleasure: delight,” and Cambridge Dictionary says, “Great happiness or pleasure.” But pleasure is not joy.
There is considerable discussion about the distinction between happiness and joy. From what I gather, happiness is dependent upon external realities: the food we eat, the places we go, the people we are with, or the material things we gather. Joy is an internal state of well-being, contentment, maybe even gladness. Gratitude produces a state of joy.
On my 65th Christmas, my holidays changed forever after a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, which became a chronic relapsing condition that left me blindsided. Six months of hospitals and rehab, medications with strange names, and IVs three to four times a week left me sad and fearful. My friends became heroes. One gave me an artificial tree with lights. Others came by and brought small gifts. These things and the company brought me happiness. The love behind the gifts brought me joy.
I was baptised at ten years old. As my body was lowered into the pool of water, I could hear the church members singing Take me to the water to be Baptised. I was underwater for only a moment, but it felt like an eternity. As Reverend Cole lifted me out of the water, I experienced a tranquility, contentment, and open-heartedness that I will never forget. I was filled with Joy.
So where was that joy now? Maybe it was waking up to the realization that I would soon be 78. No!
I have figured it out. On the morning of my 77th Christmas, I was missing joy. I also realized that, for me, in the background of every joyful experience is the hum of creation in the form of music. Christmas carols, Gregorian chants, traditional African-American hymns, or Eastern-based chanting. Whenever, wherever there is music, joy wells up within me. It reminds me of a verse from a rendition of a spiritual I love.
Over my head, I hear music in the air. There must be a God somewhere.
Christmas is gone, and my life in this village is filled with snow and ice. There are clouds and empty tree branches. But there is sunshine. There is contentment. There is sweet music. And there is joy.
Sala
wordshavecolor.com 
Technology. Seniors. Connectivity.
The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was developed to make broadband internet services accessible to low-income households. Sadly, the program has been discontinued – a casualty of legislative haggling.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reports that initial funding for the ACP, which provides subsidies to eligible participants with internet service provider (ISP) contracts, ended in June of 2024. Additional funds were not approved during Congressional budget negotiations. Perhaps some legislators were clueless; maybe others just didn’t care about the needs of isolated seniors, students needing access to learning options, residents of tribal lands, and rural communities. Perhaps some legislators just plain ignored the fact that internet access is often critical for medical care, jobs, social security, Medicare, and housing information. It’s a situation fueled by unkindness.
Several ISPs, in an unexpected Godsend, have stepped up to fill gaps left by the termination of funding.
I live in a township with a large and diverse senior population. Over the years, I’ve met several residents who embrace technology for all that it can offer. In other words, more than just email. Some residents, however, are nervous about online usage, even as they recognize the advantages technology offers. Some do not know how to use a computer. Yes, that’s a thing in 2024. Some simply cannot afford the costs of internet service providers and they are left out in the cold. That’s where ACP is beneficial.
I get it about distrusting online activity. There are dangers out there.
Targeting of seniors by scammers is high. Media coverage of identity theft has panicked women I know. There are also challenges that include “clouds,” automatic updates, and social media misinformation and untruths. I know a woman who was targeted by a man looking for lonely seniors in order to steal hard-earned savings. She lost a significant amount of money.
And my personal gripe – no exaggeration here: I loathe the hours I spend with technical support associates who don’t know their jobs. So yes, there are real inconveniences with the internet.
My point is that isolation for those without the internet is real ─ and alarming. A woman in my building told me about her feelings of isolation and depression during the pandemic lockdown. Unfortunately, there were no “pods” in this seniors’ building to help alleviate loneliness. The value of connecting with others and receiving ─ sometimes lifesaving ─ information through the internet cannot be overstated. ACP support for internet access is critical.
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It was 1995, I think. I remember it was around 11 p.m. The neighborhood children were in bed and the streets were quiet in Oakland, CA. I poured a glass of wine and relaxed in front of my new gift. It was mid-summer, but it felt like Christmas morning to me.
My employers, God bless ‘em, who were software developers, had given me one of the company’s old IBM personal computers. It was a clunky machine that put me over the moon. Taking a sip of wine, I stared at the dark screen.
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Six years prior, I worked at a college that had invested in computers and software training for some of its administrative staff. I was fortunate to be included in the training. Although cautious about the technology, I was excited.
We had to learn a lot quickly. Word processing software felt complex to an administrative staff that had been swatting away on Selectric typewriters ─ some of us for decades ─ using typewriter correction tape, inserting carbon paper for duplication, and making countless trips to a mimeograph room.
Some quit the training, preferring to stick with typewriters until the new technology was mandated. I chose to struggle on. It would serve me well. Like the delight of discovering a new bread recipe, meeting a new man, or watching buds on a tree become leaves, I was filled with excitement. Life was taking on new energy.
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I turned on the computer. MS-DOS loaded, and things took off from there. I don’t remember the internet icon. Netscape? Maybe. The guys at work must have given me a password because suddenly there was the twittering, singsong beeping of the “handshake,” and the image of a globe appeared on the screen.
Scooching closer to my desk, I anticipated a new world with cultures and places vastly different from my own: different languages, ways of walking and talking, and delightful food traditions. I never looked back. The internet allowed me to “get off my block” and fully engage with the world. Technology saved me.
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Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic lockdown. I loved being alone but was missing in-person connections with friends. Then. Along came Zoom.
It saddens me that seniors and other isolated citizens need, but can’t access, broadband internet. Online access allowed me to attend community and civic meetings, free and live performances from the Royal National Theatre in London and other entertainment, visit with friends from afar, and participate in myriad activities and make connections during the Covid lockdown. Again, technology rescued me.
No one should be without broadband in a world where, some say, another pandemic is imminent. Come on legislators. Quit haggling. Include the ACP in September’s budget talks.
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Posted in Writing from the heart
Tagged Affordable Connectivity, Aging, Commentary, editorial, internet access, internet service providers, Legislative haggling, Life Stories, Opinions, political process, Reflections, senior isolation, seniors and technology, technology access, Unkindness