"If you don't continue to learn things, you get stupid,"

I got a phone call on Saturday from my mother.  Her aunt, a lovely lady who had lived to the age of 102, passed away.  It was a phone call I had been expecting for a while, yet it still came as a little bit of a surprise, as she was always so "with it" whenever I went to visit her, even though in the most recent years, those visits took place in a nursing home.

A lot of people in nursing homes seem to stagnate.  They get into a rut, just doing the same old things day after day, and they spend a lot of time looking back at their lives, rethinking things they did and shouldn't have done or things they wish they did that they didn't do.  While Aunt Marguerite seemed to remember things about all of her visitors, bringing up things done while we were young and stupid (always brought up with a smile and a laugh, never mean), she also seemed to keep up with the news of what was going on in one's life.  For instance, she and I talked writing, with her taking some of the credit for the talent I seem to have been born with a gleam in her eye.  We talked about her memoir book that she put together, beginning in 2003, when she was 93, and which her daughter and granddaughters "published" for her in 2006, when she noted in the back that she was ready to go whenever God called her....

and she always joked that she would have continued to write her memoirs if she had known she was going to live so long.

My visits with Aunt Marguerite always made me remember another woman I met in my travels on the spaceship we call Earth.  Her name was Mary, and I worked with her at JoAnn Fabrics in Florida.  While she was teaching me the things I needed to know at work, she talked about taking a class on quilt making in her late 60's/early 70's.  It was she who made the comment that I used as the title for this blog, as she felt that the best way to prevent one's mind from stagnating was to continue to learn.  Her firm belief was that schooling should continue throughout one's life, as those graduating college often struck her as thinking that they had learned everything they ever needed to know and then had closed their minds to all else.  She encouraged me to never stop learning and growing, because that was the best way to remain "with it".

While I'll miss my great-aunt and the lively talks we had about writing, I'll never forget the things she taught me throughout the years.  I'll remember Mary and will continue to keep my eyes open, learning something new every day, because I never want to stagnate and "become stupid".

I encourage everyone who sees these blogs to do the same.