Elder Maze: Let’s show respect and dignity to our elders

“Paul, have respect for your elders.” I heard that a lot as a child and teenager. It quickly became a cliché to me.

But it’s a cliché no longer.

Everywhere I turn my gray-fringed bald head, I find myself looking at wonderful examples of elders being respected. Some of that respect is economically driven, for many elders have a great deal of discretionary money. But I also see caring respect offered because elders simply deserve respect.

I also see dreadful examples of elders being disrespected, so often from indifference or benign neglect. In the more than 20 e-mails and hand-written letters I received after the first Elder Maze column appeared, there were stories of elders feeling isolated from family members, from neighbors, from their churches.

The 20th-century English writer J.B. Priestly captures the elder’s dilemma: “There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age – I missed it coming and going.”

One anonymous reader who called herself “Hopeless” identifies her “golden years” as “Bah humbug.” As she got older, her life circumstances changed dramatically enough to change her previously cheerful self into an angry, depressed woman.

She, like a few others who wrote, simply wanted to “vent” her feelings. If this column serves as a venting target, it will be worth it.

Sometimes circumstances cannot change. However, I hope that venting might allow some internal pressure to release so that personal attitudes can change.

Too many elders – one is too many – feel they have no one who takes them seriously. Perhaps one small step toward correcting that impression is to restore “elder” to its proper place of respect and honor.

An unknown elder once said, “I still have a full deck; I just shuffler slower now.” This person affirms an elder’s innate value, regardless of what the body might be saying.

In our culture, and many cultures around the word, persons called “elders” have a proud and respected history.

That isn’t the case in today’s American culture. Elders are seldom seen as persons of authority, of wisdom, of respect, as persons who teach their families and villages what life can be like.

It is high time to raise the elders of our society back into relationships where their wisdom matters to younger family members.

It is time to return the authority and respect elders once had. This may be the best way we can ensure they have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting who they are, where they live, and the value they still have in our society.

Most elders would be satisfied to retain simple authority and respect for their own lives. They want adult sons and daughters to treat them as their parents, not their children.

They want to determine how and where they live. When their bodies are no longer in their control, elders still want to determine some of what happens to them.

Even when our elders’ cognitive abilities are compromised through dementia, we can offer them the respect and dignity they’ve earned simply by being who they are. We must always approach elders with the innate respect and dignity due every human being.

They still have much to teach us also. Whether elders are our parents, our neighbors, a local business person, an uncle or grandmother, they taught us about living. Now, in their advanced years, elders are ready to teach us about growing older and about dying.

We must watch, listen and learn from them. We owe this to them. We owe this to ourselves, if for no other reason than so we can know what to do when we become somebody’s elder.