Do yourself a favor, make a visit

Want to do something that will give you an emotional lift?

Want to do something that will restore your perspective about what’s important and what’s trivial?

Want to do something that virtually guarantees a smile?

Visit.

Years ago, my Uncle Jim Luginbill told me that the biggest problem he faced after he moved to Swiss Village in Berne was boredom.

The days seem long. You hear too much about other people’s health problems and infirmities. And — in Uncle Jim’s case — you grow weary of approaching-end-times religious messages.  

The antidote: Visits.

There is absolutely nothing easier to do than visit someone at a local nursing home, hospital or retirement center. Nothing.

And the rewards are phenomenal.

Trust me on this. I’ve been at it for nearly 20 years.

It started in 2000 for me.

Uncle Jim was at Swiss Village. My parents were gone. And something beckoned.

I started carving out some time on Monday afternoons, heading up to Berne to see Jim, share gossip and some laughs.

Bob Weinland, whose daughter I’d dated in high school, was a buddy of Jim’s. Like a lot of people as they move into the twilight years, they hadn’t been particularly close when they were in their 40s or 50s or 60s but now found they had a great deal in common.

So we’d get together on Monday afternoons. Jim would open a bottle of red wine and have a plate of cheese and crackers, and we’d talk. And we would demolish the boredom of their day in doing so.

A few years later — having lost both Jim and Bob — I started stopping in to see Betty Starbuck at Crowne Point in Portland. I don’t say that because it amounts to something virtuous on my part. 

It was easy. That is the point. It was something simple.

Later — after Betty’s death — it was trips to Miller’s Merry Manor outside of Dunkirk to see Virginia Conkling, mother of my old buddy Al and widow of the great and colorful Fred Conkling.

And those visits have continued long after Virginia’s death. Every Thursday unless I’m out of the country or out of state.

Again, the point of this isn’t to cast myself as doing something that’s a big deal.

It’s not. It’s easy.

The point is that not enough of us do it.

And those who don’t are missing out.

Heading toward Thanksgiving and Christmas and the holidays, make a little resolution: Visit.

Do it and you’ll thank me later.