A society that honors elders is more caring
Last year, when I lived in a small village on the Italian island of Sardinia, I spent my days with a remarkable and vibrant woman in her 70s, Franzisca Manca. In learning about village life through Franzisca’s eyes, I was moved to see the crucial role elders play in the daily life of rural communities.
As Italy goes back on lockdown for the holidays to protect its elders, I am struck by our own lack of a nationwide COVID-19 policy protecting our most vulnerable members and, in particular, by many Americans’ continued refusal to mask up. These reckless acts of refusing masks are a form of ageism, a lack of concern for older people. Out of sight and out of mind, many of our elders are perceived to play marginal roles in American family life.
Other cultures value the elders in their midst. In Sardinia, elders are afforded a central social role in the lives of their communities. They often lead full and vibrant lives well into their 10th decade. In the summer months, my landlord’s aunts, both in their 80s, “go out” each evening. When I didn’t do the same, they became worried about my own well-being. What’s more, the retirement home in Santu Lussurgiu, where my Sardinian language teacher and I would sing and recite poetry, is located at the heart of the village. Residents are free to come and go. They receive daily visits from family members.
In Sardinia and the Navajo Nation, a place I also lived for many years, the central importance of elders was very much on display during the early days of the pandemic. In March, governments in both places issued large billboards and PSAs depicting elders interacting with young people. The billboard message: Mask up, if not for yourselves, then for your elders. This strategy seemed quite effective. Within one week of the lockdown, and after some initial grumbling, Italians and Diné citizens consistently wore masks in public places — no questions asked.
The contrast between places like Sardinia, the Navajo Nation and broader U.S. society seems essential for understanding the “politics of masking” in the current global moment. If elders are separate and distinct from us, and if what happens to them can’t happen to us, then why should we mask up?
If younger generations are impervious to contracting the virus — something that has now turned out not to be the case — then why bother with the hassle, the chaffing behind the ears, the difficulty in speaking with a piece of cloth over our mouths? As we’ve seen in the U.S., many people refuse to wear a mask. In so doing, they cast their fate and the fate of their families to the wind.
Admittedly, there are enclaves within the U.S. where communities do mask and where elders are centered in important ways, but these are often communities with little to no representation in the public sphere. Today, multigenerational households make up only 5.6 percent of the U.S. population, dwarfed by Italy’s 20 percent and 14.7 percent on the Navajo Nation.
In assessing what we have lost about our shared, intergenerational humanity, I think we have much to learn from the active role that elders play in communities such as those in Sardinia and the Navajo Nation. We could, for example, rethink where we build our retirement communities: Rather than locating them in a town’s periphery, we might locate them in the heart of our towns and cities. And we could call up an elder, or visit them through the plexiglass of a nursing facility in the age of COVID-19, lending our ear to lives and stories yet untold.