Basic skills, not so basic

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A guy and his wife from next door got to know a younger neighbor. Both of them were old, in their late seventies. The man had been in the army and the woman, Marla, had been a lawyer and was about to retire. A year ago, the man died leaving Marla alone in the house. They had no children and only a few relatives living nearby.

Marla came to the younger neighbor soon after the funeral asking for help with some matters. They started with small things like sending emails and using the phone. But, helping Marla with these matters, the younger neighbor understood that Marla knew nothing about computer work. Marla used an old and overly expensive email service. She could not do simple things like adding, saving, printing and moving files to a flash drive and looking for information on the Internet. A free email account would be enough for Marla, but she did not know about this.

The problem was not only with the phone and computer. Marla seemed to know little in other parts of adult life too. Little by little, it became clear that her husband had done everything for her. He paid the bills, managed money, fixed all the problems and handled household work. After her husband died, Marla admitted that she had no idea whether their house was fully paid for or not. This matched what her husbands sister in law said during the funeral. The sister in law, who was also quite old, said she was worried about Marla future because she had no idea how to live without her husband support.

The younger neighbor has spent a lot of time showing Marla simple things and helping her handle daily matters. The whole thing is becoming more difficult now since Marla is going to sell her house and move to another state. Still, she cannot finish half of the needed things. Marla easily gets stressed because of small things, gives up fast and starts falling behind again.

What makes the situation hard is Marla stubbornness. Marla is actually a proud person who does not take advice from anyone. Several times she was told how to solve a certain problem, Marla chose to ignore all advice and saw it was right only when the situation became even more difficult than before. Even now, Marla is worried about money problems, but she talks about buying a private plane for herself and her two dogs because she does not want to travel by bus, does not want the dogs to be on the bus and does not want to drive her expensive sports car across the whole country.

The car became a new problem for Marla and the younger neighbor. Marla was told to sell it and buy a cheaper car which would leave extra money for other things. But she refused. She kept calling it her baby and said it was a gift from her husband. She was offered a new small car with low mileage. She thought that the mileage was too high and the car would break down easily on the road.

Now the younger neighbor is tired of dealing with her problems. The thing that surprises everybody is that Marla is a college educated lawyer with many years of experience, but somehow she spent her whole life without learning basic things like paying a gas bill or sending an email.

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