You too, dear students, will be old
Elders are surviving family abuse
PERHAPS one of the most startling blunders of our generation is the way we take care of, or rather fail to take care of, our elderly – those very individuals who made sacrifices so that we could get an education, so that our needs for shelter and food were met, and gave the fine advice that was readily at hand when we needed it most.
We have moved away from being a society that cares. Instead we have become a society where material assets and inheritances mean more than anything by providing us with a springboard to keeping up with the Joneses.
Let me paint the picture for you, generally speaking.
The generation of the 1930s are now in their 80s.
They made great sacrifices, living in tin houses, surviving a war and the riots (of 1949) to protect you and me, so that we could see this age today.
That generation, who we now fondly call our elders (or great-grandparents) had forsaken their education, walked barefoot to work, saved their pennies to support their children and extended family – and hoped that one day that sacrifice would bear fruit, and in turn we would support them in their old age.
Then came the generation after, mostly born in the 1950s to 1970s, who largely benefited from their parents’ sacrifices.
Inheritances were seen as a means to move out of “the townships” and move into urban areas. And so the extended families that the elders worked so hard to keep together quickly broke up.
Not that it was not necessary, but the effects are disconcerting. Families stopped talking to each other, over unequal divisions of money and allegations of favouritism.
The prodigal sons returned home when they realised that “it’s close to time for the old man to pass away”; and the issue of the will, well that is another chapter on its own!
Now we have the newest generation; the born-frees and after. Born in a new democratic South Africa, many not even knowing their great grandparents, or bothering to pick up the phone to check if gramps or gran is well.
Of course the annual family visits had to be grudgingly put up with, but the notion “we will keep as far away as possible from the smelly old people” prevailed.
Roots
It is sad how we as the middle generation have given in and generally supported these born-frees in their quest for eradicating the essence of their roots.
But when a newborn arrives with “I am too young to be burdened with a baby”, it is then that they reach out to their “idle” grandparents to take care of the child.
And the poor gran, for the sake of feeling needed, for keeping the peace and for the meagre R100 a month upkeep from the parent, has now been forced to become a parent all over again.
Generally speaking, we have used and abused our older generation. It is so seldom that we see an elder being loved and carefully taken care of by their children.
Granted, life is more costly these days; life is busier, and we juggle many careers in a day. We too struggle to make ends meet.
Does this mean that we pay less attention to our elders? That we leave it to the government to build more old-age homes to take care of our own, so that we can absolve ourselves of our “burdens”?
Little do we realise (both our generation and the bornfrees) that such is the cycle of life, and we too shall get old.
At a first-year lecture earlier this year I enquired as to what students perceived of the elderly. What astounded me most was the responses of these out-of-schoolers (barely 18), who described the elderly as “anyone over 41 years old”!
Diaper
Little does one realise that in the years to come, you too, my dear students, will be “over 41 years old”, and in need of a diaper change.
You too will succumb to one of the frailties, like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
And you too may be shunted by your family to a remote, sterile “home” where annual visits from anyone dear to you is a sacrifice just to ease the conscience.
To those children, parents and grandparents who have made concerted efforts to promote love and high family values among your loved ones despite adversity, to those parents who make sure that the latest generation do not become a burden to our elders, to those parents who afford our elders the opportunity of quality family time and longevity, and to those volunteers who make the effort to spend quality visits with these strangers in old-age homes: I take my hat off to you.
You are commendable and admirable individuals with excellent family values that are all too rare.