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Tuesday 20 November 2012

Meet the Elderly?

One of the madder ideas from  the Tory Party recently was that us 60 year olds should volunteer to take care of 90 year olds. Setting aside minor details like whether some 60 year olds are fit - or safe - to look after the very elderly, there's a bigger question:

What makes us think the very elderly - the over-75s - and there are more and more of them - only want to have contact with other very elderly people? Do they have to be herded into some kind of corral? Are they not allowed contact with other generations? Does their physical frailty somehow reduce them to being a problem?

I had a salutary experience today.

I've joined a group called 'Meet the Elderly.' I'll be driving a 90 year old woman on a Sunday afternoon either to a museum for tea and a guided tour or to a volunteer's house for tea and a blether. This woman has slight mobility problems and trouble with her eyesight, but she is as sharp as a tack with a great memory, has a great sense of humour and is finding it very hard to accept that she is seen as useless to society. She worked all her days and looked after her parents in their old age but has had to give up the family bungalow she lived in for 77 years. Chillingly, she refers to her very comfortable retirement flat as 'solitary confinement'. She has no friends left alive. Her only relative is a second cousin. She sees no stimulating company from one week to the next.

My idea of hell in old age is to be left sitting in a room lined with armchairs. Nobody talking. A TV babbling away in the corner. Nothing to look forward to but dying. If that's the future for the very elderly, pass out the 'Do Not Resuscitate' labels now.

But I'll bet this woman is going to be interesitng company and has some great stories to tell from her social and working life in Glasgow in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

I know this from delivering library books to the very elderly in Govan. Archie was a gunner on merchant ships in the North Atlantic convoys in World War Two. May is the widow of a victim of the Ibrox Disaster and moved to Ibrox to be close to where he died. Lena brought up a large family alone and is still dealing with a middle-aged son who has addiction problems. It's an education to listen to these people.

They all had a contribution to make in their younger days - and they sure as hell deserve our attention now in their old age.




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