P. A. Chacko
“The COVID-19 pandemic is causing untold fear and suffering for older people across the world.
The fatality rate for older people is higher overall, and for those over 80, it is five times the global average.
Beyond its immediate health impact, the pandemic is putting older people at greater risk of poverty, discrimination and isolation. It is likely to have a particularly devastating impact on older people in developing countries… As we look to recover better, we will need ambition and vision to build more inclusive, sustainable and age-friendly societies that are fit for the future. ” (Message by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres)
Simone de Beauvoir wrote that ‘there is one form of experience that belongs only to those that are old.’
Yes, that experience is often rich, laced with bitter sweet incidents.
The elderly are moving ahead of us showing us the way. Their struggles in bringing us up, their joys in seeing us growing, their efforts to keep us happy, their suppressing of pain when they saw us misbehave, their words of warning sometimes when unheeded, and on and on.
As they reach the twilight years of life they have great expectations, sometimes bordering on anxiety about us. They also expect love and care when they are helpless. In a growing worldwide culture of care homes and old age homes, can many of them say with Frank Lloyd Wright :“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes”?
Even if they do not demand our love and respect, our care and concern, they deserve them, because they have given us birth. They gave us an identity.