COVER STORY

“PUT THAT CELL PHONE DOWN!” AND OTHER LIFE LESSONS

Ayesha Bismilla, back row, centre, with her son Yusuf, daughter-in-law Vicki, grandchildren and their spouses and great-grandchildren.

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

Not a day goes by that my husband and I don’t think of his late mother Ayesha who lived with us for many years.

While watching a PBS documentary called Lives Well Lived I kept thinking of her and all the things she taught us. She never deliberately set out to teach us, but in the way she lived her everyday life she taught us plenty. Everyone in the family, extended family, friends, neighbourhood and community called her by the respected term Ayesha Bai. Ayesha Bai never preached to us, never ever raised her voice at us and in her gentle, quiet, unassuming way she set an example for us and for our children.

She was widowed at the very, very young age of 40 when her littlest son was only two years old. Bereaved but strong, she continued to live with her mother-in-law who herself was a phenomenal woman and together they raised Ayesha’s five sons. 

When her oldest sons were grown and started working in their chosen fields, she moved here to Canada. She set up her own home with her youngest son who was ten at the time and she nurtured him through his schooling and university years until he qualified and married. They continued to live together in the wonderful Indian extended family way. As she aged, she made sure that she spent several months rotationally with each of her sons, thus being the best possible role model for all her grandchildren. She taught them life’s lessons about kindness, patience, family togetherness, and she also taught them to bake (she was the most gifted baker in the world!) and her unsurpassed recipes still continue to thrill all her family. Today if one of her children or grandchildren mention “cookoo balls” (coconut cupcakes) all her children salivate for them until someone caves and bakes them! Her culinary expertise was very diverse; her biryani was unsurpassed as was her amazingly moist macaroni and cheese.

But it’s her unassuming lessons that live on with us. My husband and I sometimes smile and repeat one of her favourite sayings that she would utter in Gujarati: “Hoo qua mathaa phore?” Loosely translated: “Why are you bashing your head against those silly worries?” And that’s the way she lived her life, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”. She walked for exercise in our neighbourhood right until she was in her late eighties. The neighbours along several streets here knew her by name, stopped and chatted with her and she knew names of neighbours that we didn’t even know. When she passed away at the age of 91, her neighbourhood friends mourned her loss along with her family.

In Lives Well Lived, filmmaker Sky Bergman, inspired by her grandmother Evelyn Ricciuti, interviewed diverse people in the age range of 75 to 103 and asked them to share their life lessons. Through their lived experiences they learned to cherish the human spirit despite some great difficulties.

The forty people she interviewed, representing 3000 years of life experiences, gave a range of reasons for happy ageing. Keeping family close, being respected by respectful children and grandchildren, living one day at a time, exercise, acting young, feeling young and ignoring the number, understanding that their life histories were sometimes tough but letting go of hurts, always putting family first, being economical and frugal, having a good work ethic, and a great sense of humour like Dr. Lou. 

Ninety-two-year-old Dr. Lou’s motto is “Famiglia prima,” always put family first. As a young medical student, he worked in his Italian family’s little cheese-making shop before and after attending medical school classes. And throughout his medical career he made himself available to his patients 24 hours a day saying that when children are sick their parents need him to be available. The advice he gave to his patients’ parents was, “Feed them at one end, wipe them at the other and love them in between!”

Those were the days! Ayesha Bismilla with her husband. 

Eighty-six-year-old Emmy, originally from Latvia, described the horrors she experienced in Poland during World War II. As a 15-year-old she and her mother were sent to a labour camp. When bombing started the guards ran off, so the prisoners took the chance to escape. Sadly, she was separated from her mother on a crowded railway platform. She was taken in by a German school teacher who helped her grieve but she determined never to be a victim. When the war ended, she found her way to the US, but her mother, not knowing where her daughter was, went back to Latvia. Miraculously mother and daughter were reunited in the US decades later. She is now a yoga teacher at the age of 86 and her dignity is awe-inspiring.

A 95-year-old Japanese American grandmother Suzy advised, “Act young, feel young, forget the number. Eat well, be healthy, be active, don’t sit around watching TV”. She was put into an internment camp in the US with her children and her mother just like thousands of other Japanese Americans during WWII. She kept busy learning new skills like knitting from other prisoners while her husband ironically had already volunteered for the US army and served despite the prejudice. He was killed in the war. She was depressed but had to wake up and live for her children. She said, “Live for them so you can overcome whatever comes”.

Blanche at age 78 has a pacemaker and titanium knee and her students call her the bionic woman. She says she was a housewife until 35 and then became a dancer and dance teacher. She is separated from her husband but says they are better friends now than when they were married.

A remarkable African American woman, she lived through segregated buses and marched for civil rights and says, “You have to decide what is important to you and do it!” At the age of 50 she became a Yoruba priest in the tradition of Nairobi and developed the confidence in herself to help others in the community. She says the secret to a happy life is, “Take time to enjoy, life goes by so quickly”.

Other interviewees echoed similar advice. “Put away the cell phones, look at real life instead, try to stay optimistic and don’t sweat the little things.”

Eighty-year-old Rose, whose students call her Mrs B, is originally from Mexico. She settled in California with her family as a child. Her father was from the Philippines, and they went through some very hungry times as immigrants.

She says she drank water to keep her belly full so she wouldn’t feel the hunger. The family picked walnuts to earn money. Their hands and knees were very dark from kneeling, picking, and sorting so school kids called her monkey.

But good friends were kind to her and invited her to join them at Girl Guides. She was the only Latino girl in the group. She was motivated to help others and work hard at school and she graduated with a high grade-point average.

She earned her B Ed and became a teacher, then vice-principal, and is now studying for her PhD at the age of 80.

Ciel, aged 76, is a painter and expresses her feelings and emotions through her paintings. She is a university professor, writer, and lecturer. Her advice is, “Follow your passion, change careers if you want to”. She is driven by curiosity about how things work. She started to pick up plastic litter from the beaches and pioneered the granulating of plastics to add to highway-paving material but received no support from government.

Disappointed, she submerged herself into her art 18 hours a day, saying, “Leave your hurting behind. Share new interests and passions.” But her idea of plastics in highways has taken hold in India! She says, “They are proudly making plastic highways in India whereas our nation is still not getting it. America is way behind.”

“She never deliberately set out to teach us, but in the way she lived her everyday life she taught us plenty,” says Dr Vicki Bismilla about her mother-in-law.

Marion and Paul, both 80, are married 54 years and say that they share the same beliefs morally and politically. They survived Nazism. She was kinder-transported out of Austria to England as a child and was fostered. Paul’s family was Jewish, so his father was jailed. Fortunately, he had served in WWI with one of his jailers who helped him get out with his family and they were shipped out to San Francisco. Paul’s and Marion’s advice is, “Make the most of every day. You can’t get out of life what you don’t put in. Make the most of every minute, every day. You won’t get that time back.” Their most proud accomplishment is family.

Finally, the filmmaker’s 103-year-old Italian grandmother, Evelyn, who was married for 68 years and had been still working out at the gym until age 99, says, “Live life to the fullest every day. Be kind, love life. Age is only a number.” She passed away six weeks after the documentary was completed and attended the first screening. She taught her family resilience and optimism, and to her grandchildren she is still an inspiration.

 There is an aboriginal proverb,

“You will be remembered forever by the tracks you leave behind. So, leave good tracks.”

Sage advice, indeed.