I DISAPPEARED THIS MORNING AT 9:00 AM.
I didn’t die. I didn’t get kidnapped. I simply stood in my own driveway in suburban Ohio, and watched the world look right through me.
We were having a “downsizing” sale. That’s the polite American word for it. But really, it’s just strangers picking through the bones of my 82 years of life for a dollar a piece.
A young couple walked up to the oak dining table. The same table where my wife, Martha, served fifty Thanksgivings. The table where we cried when Kennedy was shot, and where we toasted when our son came back from overseas.
“It’s too bulky,” the young man said, barely glancing at it. “And this dark wood? It’s so dated. We’d have to paint it white to make it livable.”
That didn’t just sting. It bled.
It is strange how easily this country forgets its older people. Some days, it feels as if we have become ghosts in our own neighborhoods.
I hear the jokes. I see the memes on the phones you think we don’t know how to use. You call us “out of touch,” “stuck in the past,” or “stubborn.” You laugh at the things we saved up for months to buy. You roll your eyes at our Frank Sinatra records, our heavy drapes, the little porcelain figures tucked away in the china cabinet.
But let me tell you a secret that might hurt: It breaks our hearts more than we say out loud.
Young people today do not want the furniture we polished for years. They do not want the fine china we were too afraid to use except on Christmas. They do not want the photo albums we labeled with such care.
And the hardest part? Sometimes it feels like you don’t want our stories, either. You’re too busy looking at a screen to look at the scars on our hands or the history in our eyes.
But listen closely, because time is a boomerang.
Yesterday, I saw a teenager wearing high-waisted jeans and listening to a song that sounded exactly like the Motown hits I danced to in 1965.
Everything you mock today was once new. Everything you think is “old junk” was once the height of cool. The furniture you think is ugly was once modern, bright, and full of promise.
That “vintage” jacket you just bought at a thrift store? A guy like me wore it to a protest when we were fighting for civil rights. That “retro” color palette you’re painting your nursery? We painted our first apartment that exact shade when we were twenty-two and terrifyingly in love.
Your grandparents felt exactly what you feel now.
We weren’t born with gray hair and wrinkles. We were the rebels. We were the wild ones. We danced until sunrise. We fell in love in the backseat of convertibles. We marched in the streets for things we believed in. We built the skyscrapers you work in and the highways you drive on.
We were beautiful and strong long before gravity did its work.
So, here is my request to you.
Next time you see an older person sitting alone on a park bench, or moving slowly in the grocery line, do not look through them. Do not sigh because they are fumbling with their change.
Take a moment to look at us with gentleness. Ask us a question. See the life behind the cloudy eyes.
Because one day—sooner than you think—your music will be called “noise.” Your clothes will be called “silly.” And someone young will point at a picture of your haircut and laugh.
And when that day comes, you will understand. You will hope that someone stops, looks you in the eye, and treats you not as a ghost, but as a person who lived.
Please share this if you believe every generation deserves respect. 
This is Part 2 of my story — the morning I watched my whole life get sold off and realized I’m not the only one this country is slowly erasing.
Click the button below to read the next part of the story.⏬⏬
