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When sizing up a prospective mate, women are often told, “Watch how he treats his mother.”
Generally, that’s good counsel. In turn, it invokes another question worth considering when assessing a person’s character: “How does that individual treat his or her elders?”
Increasingly, we witness disappointing answers to that question.
For example, I was in a slow-moving grocery checkout line, made so by an elderly lady struggling to find and count her money. Behind her were several younger people increasingly exasperated with the delay. One began muttering under his breath while the others laughed derisively, using terms like “senile” and “senior moment.” Kindly, the clerk helped the lady and, after a bit more fuss, she got the job done. As she shuffled out, I heard one of these miscreants whisper, “Somebody should put her out to pasture.” Leaning forward, I told them, “Your day will come.”
Not long after, I happened upon an absurd road rage incident where some emotional dolt with an ultra-short fuse was honking, leaning out the window and screaming, “Move it, grandpa!” to the car in front of him. As I pulled up behind this goon at the next stoplight, he again screamed at the driver and occupant of the so-called offending vehicle in words I cannot share.
The target of his verbal venom was an elderly couple clearly frightened and intimidated by his tirade. As we proceeded, it was apparent the senior citizen behind the wheel was driving safely and at the posted limit. His crime? He was old and not subject to the same frenetic hurry sickness as other drivers in his midst.
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Elder Abuse is Increasing
While the incidence of elder abuse, both physical and emotional, is increasing in our nation (and likely under-reported), so also, it seems, is an attitude of disrespect for and impatience with the very old. In a culture obsessed with youth and inebriated with speed and personal entitlement, the willingness to tolerate, let alone honor our elders seems in peril.
“Partly, it’s the breakdown of extended families,” an older friend hypothesized.
With fewer elderly people living with their extended families, youngsters are less likely to learn to respect and care for their grandparents, as well as elders in general. Increasingly, seniors collect in retirement communities and care facilities, away from the social mainstream. This creates an “out of sight, out of mind” scenario in which people don’t make time in their busy lives to include the old.
“Deep down, I think it’s because we scare them,” another senior told me. “They don’t want to believe they will ever get old like me. And, have you ever seen a culture more afraid of aging and death?”
Other elders tell me this is just part of a general loss of civility and compassion in our society. The old simply make easier targets of opportunity because they seem less able to defend themselves. Whatever the causes, the effects are reprehensible. Do we want to create a society where the old are too often forgotten and, when in our midst, treated like worn out shoes destined for the landfill? If so, we discard a treasure trove of experiential wisdom our elders won through years of facing life’s challenges, an asset that many other cultures recognize, honor and rely upon.
The following story speaks to our cultural blindness in this regard. An exasperated woman sends her son out to purchase a wooden bowl for her feeble mother (his grandmother), who keeps dropping and breaking their porcelain ones. When the boy returns, he brings two bowls instead of one.
“I only wanted one!” his mother fumes.
Her son replies, “I bought the other one for you, for the day when you are old.”
Whatever bed the younger are making for their elders will one day be theirs to sleep in.
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