My grandparents are immigrants, which is fairly common enough that I think this is important—they’re alone. The same seems to be true for many non-immigrants. For those who come from or grew up in a culture where the young take care of the old on a kind of quid pro quo for having been supported until they go off to university (and maybe even past then).
But today’s old generally are left to their own devices. Kids and grandkids don’t live in the same town, rarely visit, and certainly don’t provide any help or relief of the day to day troubles of age. If my grandmother hears from me once a week, she’s thrilled. This is just a fact of life. But it’s not really a good one.
Elders are forced to be more self-sufficient, which is exactly what they can’t do as time goes on. So small issues become big issues because they’re not caught or stopped early enough. Example. Noticing that an old man has started to have trouble with balance can lead to preventative care that would prevent a fall. But if no one is there to notice and the old man has no one to call on for help, or he just doesn’t want to bother his kids who have busy lives, he eventually falls. And that’s the beginning of a steady decline in health and life experience.
I look forward to not having any fucks left to give about all the silly things that occupy life when we’re young that don’t really matter.
I don’t look forward to being alone and uncared for.
Isolation is not care.
What seems inevitable is personal, care giving robotics. Baymax, but in real life. So hopefully care — not just medicine—becomes universal and trivial. Given the mass of boomers, or demographics in places like Japan, the market is immense.
Ultimately, I think the isolation of our elders has to change. They should be integrated into society. Into communities. Not isolated away from them. “Downtowns” are for the young and the old. Places where you don’t have to drive, where you can be a regular at many shops, where more than one person will notice when you’re not there, etc. This is not something that needs inventing. It’s a culture that needs changing.
Photo credit: The Disney Wiki
