How do we treat our elderly citizens?
Aging comes with lots of baggage – impaired mobility, impaired mental function for some and a cocktail of illnesses, some of which are inescapable no matter how healthy a life one led.
I recently watched a movie called Old People, a social commentary exploring the disregard with which society tends to treat its elderly people, and how this indifference could one day turn against the younger generation, which has no time for its old.
The contents of the movie are a gruesome fantasy where the old people, who have been abandoned by their families in a neglected nursing facility, gradually lose their humanity and go on a killing spree. They gang up and hunt down the young people in the vicinity, starting with a cruel carer at the facility who has the habit of talking them down and taunting them. They make their way out of the ‘jail’ and head to the village, which they set on fire and kill everyone they come across. At the end of the movie, all the adults die, the only surviving main characters are two children who barely make it out of the doomed village alive. What is implied is that they only survive because the youngest child, a boy, had cultivated a loving relationship with his grandfather, who had been living in the godforsaken home.
A farfetched storyline, yes, but one that offers food for thought, one that calls for introspection and asks a critical question: how do we treat our old?
Aging comes with lots of baggage – impaired mobility, impaired mental function for some and a cocktail of illnesses, some of which are inescapable no matter how healthy a life one led. This means having to rely on others to do things that they once did for themselves such as cleaning after themselves. If I just described your parent or grandparent, do you care for them? How often do you visit them? If you don’t visit them often, how often do you call them to check on them? Do you look after them in the first place, or have you left that duty to the most responsible sibling in the family?
When they keep repeating stories that they have told a 100 times before, are you patient enough to listen to them and gracious enough to pretend that you’re hearing the story for the first time or do you interrupt them and walk out on them? Or worse, finish the story for them?
Most families hold get-togethers once in a while. If yours does, how often do you include your elderly relatives, especially those that require assistance to and fro the venue? And do you go out of your way to ensure that they are present or do you find it easier to just leave them where they are?
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members,” said Mahatma Gandhi. One day we will grow old, and even though you have never cast your mind this far, there’s no doubt that you will want your children to have time for you, to visit you often, to call you, even care for you if need be. With this in mind, it is said that children learn best through observing, which brings me to the question, if you have children, how often do you take them to visit their grandparents? Is it once a year on Christmas Day or New Year? Or once every five years? If the latter is the case, don’t be surprised if they treat you like this one day, several years to come, because, in essence, you’ve shown them that it is acceptable.
The writer is editor, Society and Magazines, Daily Nation. Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com
