When age makes a difference:

Twilight

Aditha Dissanayake

Around 6000 Senior Citizens receive care in about 150 Elders' Homes throughout Sri Lanka :

Sponsorship scheme for elders

Under the sponsorship scheme of the National Secretariat for Elders called Vedihiti Awarana any organization or individual can contribute financially to look after an elder in our society. Elders over 70 years of age will gain from this service. The money will be distributed among the needy elders by the Secretariat and Divisional Secretaries.

Those who would like to contribute could contact, The Director, Telephone numbers 0112826749, 0112824082

I know a lady who lives on her own in Kurunegala. She grows vegetables like brinjal and bitter gourd in her garden, draws water from a well, collects tamarind when they ripen and fall from the tree at the end of her garden, preserves them and hands them over to all her children and grandchildren. Needless to say they are the best tamarind in the country, or so she claims. What is so remarkable in that? Nothing, except for one simple fact. The lady is ninety two years old.

She is surely living everybody's day dream; the day dream of sailing through your sixties, seventies and eighties with vigorous bodies and minds, safely reaching ninety, and from then on, hoping to die instantly of a heart attack, preferably while pottering around in the garden, under an azure sky with the chirping of a squirrel in your ears.

But, as statistics reveal with a population of 9.6 per cent who fall into the category of elders among us, (which includes everyone over sixty) here is the time to take a realistic look at old age: old age as it is and not as a minor inconvenience that could be remedied by "anti-aging" lotions or e-messages advising you to throw out nonessential numbers like age and weight if you wish to stay young.

Here is the time to stop believing old age is a "disease" that might soon be "cured" by a medical miracle. For, the truth is that not all of us are capable of aging successfully as the grand old lady in Kurunegala or, Warren Buffet, the investment sage who will turn 81 this August or eighty five year old Queen Elizabeth II. They are exceptions in a world where physical and financial hardships mount as you move beyond your "almost normal" 60s and 70s, classified by sociologists as the "young old," into the harsher territory of the "old old" (80s and 90s).

Statistics revealed in medical journals point to the fact that once you begin to blow out eighty or more candles on your birthday cake your future becomes finite. " The risk of Alzheimer's disease doubles in every five-year period over 65", writes Susan Jacoby in her essay The Myth of Aging Gracefully. Everyone must "prepare for the possibility that not the best, but some of the worst years of our lives may lie ahead if we live into our ninth and 10th decades."

Gloomy predictions. But hopefully not for us Sri Lankans. Nurtured as we are on religions that emphasize the importance of caring for our parents and our elders, should we worry too much about our plight when we become an "out dated coin", (avalangu kasiyak) one day, no longer able to add our mite to the society we live in?

The odds look reassuring. For, according to statistics given by Helpage, around "6000 senior citizens receive care in about 150 Elders' Homes throughout Sri Lanka." Could this limited amount of homes for the elders mean that the younger generations are more loving and attentive towards their elders and that they are willing to look after their grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles without sending them to institutions?

The answer unfortunately is not yes. Not being in a nursing home does not necessarily mean the elders in our society are getting the attention, love and care that they deserve. According to a statement of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress, one of the main reasons for this is the fact that most members of the younger generation have moved to the capital or other major cities leaving their elderly parents in their villages. It is estimated that more than 2 million have gone abroad for employment but that their monthly earnings are less than US$ 150, which leaves them with little means to support their elders. It is yet unfortunate that even those who are among the 1 million, educated professionals, skilled or otherwise who have migrated to the developed countries too, often neglect to look after their parents who are left behind. In addition, there are also elderly people who neither have children nor anybody else to look after them nor can look after themselves on their own.

Enter the National Secretariat for Elders. The department which comes under the Ministry of Social Services, encourages participation of older persons in social development and ensures their independence, care, participation, self-fulfillment and dignity. In addition to protecting the rights of elders under the Parliamentary Act No. 09 of 2000 where clause 15 (1) decrees that children should under no circumstance willfully neglect their parents, the Secretariat also provides welfare services for elders. "We have a twenty four hour hotline (071 8262982) which provides care givers to look after elders" says Director J. Krishnamoorthy.

"We also provide identity cards for everyone who is over sixty.

When these ID cards are shown the elders get preference in hospitals and a 5 per cent discount at Osu Sala. Anybody over sixty, regardless of their income level can get an ID either from the Secretariat or from Divisional Secretaries".

The most recent venture of the National Secretariat for Elders is the sponsorship scheme called the Vedihiti Awarana. "If you wish to sponsor an elder, contact us" invites Director Krishnamoorthy. (See box)

So, who wants to live to be a 100? In spite of the dire warnings from scientists and sociologists that we cannot expect to "indefinitely escape the degenerative, chronic and irreversible diseases of advanced old age" and that it is a MYTH that "science - any day now - is going to fix whatever it is that ails us", most of us do dream of living forever and ever. As Robert Browning said, "Grow old along with me!/The best is yet to be...

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