Second century proves challenging for longtime Allen Parker

For longtime Allen Parker Eileen Shade, who turned 101 July 1 at Dearborn’s Beaumont Commons assisted living center, failing eyesight and limited mobility have proven frustrating to the independent-spirited woman.

Shade, who has macular degeneration, can only see indistinct dark and light shapes, and her muscles atrophied during the past year when she was in the hospital for three months while being treated for pneumonia.

“I am going to be 101,” she said during a June 27 interview. “I am not dreading it, but I am not anticipating it.”

Shade worries that she is no longer useful, and said she finds herself sitting around too much.

“I feel like I am not contributing a thing to anybody, and then I hear people say ‘you are contributing, just by being here,’” she said. “They keep saying, ‘God has something for you to do,” and I said, ‘I hope to heck it isn’t hard.’”

Shade said after years of doing things for other people, it is difficult for her to be so dependent on others for her own needs.

She was married to her husband, Robert, who died in 2000, for 58 years, and she has a daughter, 74, and a son, 78, who both live in Michigan. She also has five grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.

Shade said her best advice for young people is to build relationships with other people, and not to try to avoid being dependent on anyone else in their life.

“It’s nice to be able to care for yourself, but I never gave anybody else the opportunity to care for me,” she said. “I always felt that I could do it, but I try to tell other people now don’t be that way.”

Shade said she also tells her grandchildren and great-grandchildren to think of other people, to be considerate of them and demonstrate concern for others.

“I’m not sure how much they listen to me,” she said. “But that is what I try to tell them.”

Shade said she has met great-great-granddaughter, who just turned one, twice, and while she cannot see her well, she knows she is cute.

“They kept saying, “Isn’t she cute, grandma?’ and I said, ‘Yes, she’s cute,’ but I got to be honest with you – I have never seen a new baby a few months old that wasn’t cute,” she said.

Shade said she socializes with her fellow residents daily in the dining hall, and enjoys eating with two of her female friends whom she knew through her church, Allen Park Presbyterian, before moving to Beaumont Commons.

She uses a wheelchair when she goes to the dining hall now, and said the muscle tone and bone density she lost during her three-month bout with pneumonia is frustrating to her.

Shade said she was a competitive swimmer as a teen, and had developed strong shoulder muscles as a result, which is now gone.

She said her eyesight has also declined, so she listens to television instead of watching it.

“I can see a figure moving around now, and I have no idea what that figure is doing on the screen,” Shade said. “We used to listen to the radio, and didn’t have pictures, and we all listened to certain stories.”

She said she has developed the habit of listening to television with her eyes closed, which causes people to mistakenly assume she is asleep.

“Sometimes I go to sleep, but usually I stay awake,” Shade said. “People walking into the room think I am sleeping, but I am not – it’s a bad habit of resting my eyes – and my daughter and her husband have come to visit me several times, and they talk very quietly, because ‘mom is sleeping.’”

She said she gets tired of looking at vague, jumping outlines, so she closes her eyes to block them out.

Shade said she would like to listen to audiobooks from the library, but she isn’t interested in romances – she’d rather hear a suspense or mystery novel.

“You know what I miss? Turning pages,” she said. “I used to hear, when I was younger, that old people do not take to change, and I would think, oh, well, that’s old people.

“Well, guess what – I am ‘old people,’ so, yes, I do not like a lot of the changes going on, but, again, that is another situation out of my hands.”

Shade has many memories she has shared with her family, and said she remembers an uncle who flew mail planes with an open-air cockpit.

She said she reassured her grandson, who wondered if she grew up with an outhouse and oil lamps, that she had indoor plumbing and electricity in her house as a child.

“He must have thought I was as old as Abraham Lincoln,” Shade said with a smile.

She said she has learned to recognize voices better since she can no longer make out the details of people’s faces, and she can recognize the way people walk, which is also distinct for most people.

Shade said she urges others to maintain their friendships throughout their lives.

“Make good friends of them,” she said. “Enjoy them.”

Shade said her granddaughters still get together with their high school and college friends decades later.

“I think that is wonderful,” she said. “I keep telling them, ‘Hang on to those friends, because you will appreciate it when you get older.’”