By, Paola Carrillo - Panama

I believe that elderly people are very special and unique. There is so much knowledge and experience that we can absorb from them. We can learn so much just by having a conversation with them, regardless what his or her background is. Each of them has a story to tell and experiences to share.

During my infancy, there was a time where the mother of my mom had to move into our house. At the beginning I didn’t like the idea of having my grandmother around. She would be getting into my life and correcting me as if she were my mother. But now, I realize how blessed I am for having the opportunity to share a part of my life with her.

My grandmother has been a very energetic woman all her live. Having to raise eleven children, she had no other choice but to be energetic. She is always looking for needy people to help. And always in the search of protests against the government to attend as if they were the last party of the year. While everybody was comfortable at their homes watching on the television the people protesting, she was out there in the street defending our rights. When she couldn’t walk anymore she still was there with her chauffer and her wheelchair. Nothing could stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do, not even my mom, because she would escape as if she were a teenager escaping to a party at midnight.

She taught me a lot of things. One of them was how to eat healthy with some strange juices and meals, which I never found out what mysterious ingredients they had. When I was little she would pay me a penny for chewing twenty times each mouthful of food, because that was the correct way of eating according to her.

I’ll never forget when I was sick; all the homemade medicines she made me take. They were medicines that would kill you only from looking and smelling them. But I have to admit that they were as effective as a doctor’s medicine.

Today my grandmother is a 93 year old woman who believes in giving and sharing. If she is not escaping from my mom with her chauffer, you can find her reading the latest news from the war on Iraq to the newest gourmet recipes. She is the living example that life doesn’t finish when you are old. It’s just the part of life where they teach us all what they have learned through their experiences of lives. That’s the reason why I believe in taking care of elderly people.