The shameful reason many grandparents are lonely? They’re too scared to tell their selfish children how they feel . . .

THE older woman, who struggled into the taxi office one morning, made me catch my breath in pity and anger.

Reliant, as many of we pensioners are on the local cabbies, we get to know them well and they’re often happy to chat.

On this particular morning, the taxi controller had remembered it was this lady’s 80th birthday at the weekend.

‘Is your daughter taking you somewhere nice for lunch?’ he asked. The pained look on her face gave him his answer.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘If she can fit it in. The little one’s got a swimming gala. They’re always so busy, they both work, and the grandchildren have so many clubs. I hardly see them these days. But you know how it is, you daren’t say anything.’

I was upset enough hearing how this lovely lady might be spending her birthday on her own, while her family lived less than five miles away. Then I heard that final remark . . . you daren’t say anything.

Could it be that this woman was actually afraid of her own daughter?

Time and time again we are told of the epidemic of loneliness in this country. One in ten over-65s feels chronically lonely all the time, yet most suffer in silence, through fear of appearing a nuisance.

More often than not, these are not old people cut off from their families or left alone without surviving relatives. Many have family who are simply too caught up in their own lives to make time for them.

I was reminded of this by a poignant letter in this paper recently. It was short, but it spoke volumes about the abysmal way we treat our elderly in this country.

‘You can also be a long-distance granny when your family live close-by,’ she wrote. ‘I live about 25 miles from my four grandsons but so far in 2017 we have seen two of them for about three hours.’ And the final cri de coeur: ‘Just a phone call would be welcome.’

As a journalist, I wanted to know more and speak to this lady, to hear her story. But she didn’t want to cause a fuss or be a nuisance. She didn’t want them to stop calling completely. It broke my heart.

Having just become a grandmother — my son Elias and daughter-in-law Eva presented me with a granddaughter, Amber Ann, on November 29 — it seems to me one of the cruellest ironies of today that families can exacerbate loneliness among the elderly rather than protect them from it.

FEAR of being seen as a nuisance, or upsetting someone and being shunned, is creeping into these relationships like a virus. It can almost feel in some families that time is used as a bargaining tool.

One ride out to the seaside for tea and scones once a month, in return for a helping hand with the school fees? Surely not.

I’m lucky, my son married a Polish girl. She frequently tells me she finds the British attitude towards the elderly utterly incomprehensible.

She has told me quite emphatically that any grandchildren will be ‘trained’ to look after me ‘when I’m old’ (I’m 76, and enormously flattered she still considers me youthful).

She also says I’m welcome to move in with them whenever I need to. I feel very lucky.

But this, sadly, in our country, is an antiquated view. Now our children are placing their parents squarely at the bottom of their priority list in their busy lives.

Too often I see feisty grandparents cowed. They daren’t suggest or guide, never utter a direct or ‘tactless’ word. They just keep quiet.

‘You’re always walking on eggshells,’ one 75-year-old grandmother explained to me, during a pre-granddaughter ‘pep talk’. ‘Whatever you suggest, it will be wrong. They do things differently today. You mustn’t say a word.’

I’ve witnessed polished women, the sort who might have gone to finishing school, smiling feebly as their grandchildren piggishly shovel food into their mouths, wipe their noses on their hands and vandalise furniture.

They’re so grateful to be invited they ‘daren’t say anything’. How many grandparents (or parents) do you know who feel they can just ‘pop in’ to see their children or grandchildren? Many have to make ‘appointments’ (often lasting about as long as the routine GP appointment).

If they’re lucky they are ‘invited’ (often months ahead) to a meal or gathering, where they’re largely ignored, as children and grandchildren alike barely look up from their phones.

One 60-year-old described how she delivered birthday presents to her grandchildren — and was barely acknowledged. She had to call to ask how they liked them.

It wasn’t always thus: growing up in the Fifties, I may not have always looked forward to the obligatory weekly family gettogether — either sitting round a coal fire in my grandmother’s modest kitchen, or sat on stiffbacked horsehair chairs in the ‘front room’ — but I always went and I always behaved myself.

I may not have liked my mother badgering me to write thank you notes the second I received a gift, or to send birthday cards to all my vast horde of relatives.

I used to complain that this ritual card-sending, calls, and so on substituted real feeling, but at least it showed someone had thought about them. Those relatives were never isolated, always included in everything.

Even in advanced stages of illness, geriatric wards or care homes would have been unthinkable — considered akin to the workhouse. I remember grandparents and elderly aunts being cared for at home.

They were family and had a right to love and care, and somehow their presence added colour and richness to our lives.

My widowed grandmother — my father’s mother — was taken in by both my family and another son, and her presence was very much felt. She was certainly not scared to speak up, and I know she went through a few rough patches with her daughters-in-law.

But cowed? Frightened of being left isolated and lonely? Unthinkable. She was included in everything, however difficult and demanding she could be.

Then there’s that feeling of being surplus to requirements. In my day, when elderly relatives lived at home, they were expected to muck in as much as they were able and became an essential component of the family.

One friend complained to me recently that she felt her children would treat her better if they needed her more. She hardly ever saw them, but with nannies and cleaners propping up the family, didn’t see any opportunities to make herself useful.

I think it’s time for families to schedule a meeting and talk — really talk. Not skirt around each other, or slot in a quick chat on the way to hockey practice.

Children and grandchildren need to recognise that loneliness kills, that it impoverishes and damages society just as much as economic hardship or unhealthy life choices.

In neglecting your old folk, you’re not just being thoughtless — you’re threatening their lives.

And we grandparents have to play our part, too. We have to stop being so meek and reclaim our role as involved elders.

WE MUST not swallow the myth that somehow we’re undeserving, that we all had it easy, sitting pretty in our big houses, with our free university education and guaranteed jobs.

We can make demands and not always fear rejection or abandonment. We can make our loneliness and deepest fears known. I now let my children — both Elias and his sister, Mina — know what I expect from them.

This ranges from insisting they call and visit regularly — they call in at least once a week, and we speak or email every day.

I’ve learned to ask them if there’s something I want. It hasn’t all been plain sailing. I’ve sometimes come a cropper and been sent to Coventry for a while after I’ve read them the ‘Riot Act’ when the phone calls have lapsed, but better to make feelings known than suffer in silence.

To end loneliness and cultivate compassion, we must stop being cowed by our children and start making demands. Because, as the slogan says, we’re worth it . . .