Elder Maze: Take time to engage seniors in conversation
Happy May Day! It is also the first day to say “Happy Older Americans Month.” For 44 years, our nation has designated May to focus our attention on the elders across America. President Bush will issue a proclamation, and activities and events are scheduled in various communities.
This prompts me to ask a question of you: Will you do anything special to honor the elders in your lives? Or if you are an elder, will you do anything special to honor yourself or another elder in your life?
Actually, I hope you can say, “No, Paul, I don’t plan to do anything special. What I’m already doing for the elders in my life already indicates the high regard I hold my elders in.”
As individuals, I suspect many of you could say that in all sincerity. But what I’m also painfully aware of is that there are too many elders – one is too many, in my opinion – who have no one who is able or willing to pay that kind of responsible attention to them.
Such attention can have the look of an ordinary conversation. A few weeks ago, my dad went with me while I shopped for a new car in Coeur d’Alene. We test-drove a car, we haggled about price, and we got acquainted with the very pleasant salesman. He is in his early 50s.
At one point, he asked my dad about his experience in the Army during World War II. Dad served in Europe in the last years of the war. He was glad to share a few stories. Then the salesman simply, sincerely, thanked my dad for his military service. Dad was grateful. So was I.
If you want to honor the elders in your life this month, you might do nothing more complicated than this: Offer some grateful listening to a family elder or someone in a nursing home, or a widow who lives in your neighborhood, or a solitary man sitting near you at a coffee counter. Find a simple way to engage them in conversation.
If you ask a question that tells the person you really want to know something about his or her life, that elder just might draw you into a world you didn’t know existed. We can learn so much when we ask the right question and then listen!
Grateful listening certainly can be its own reward. But the gift of grateful listening is not only for the listener. In that moment that lasts much longer than a moment, the storyteller finds affirmation for a life no doubt lived on an uneven landscape.
You may hear of childhood or young adult triumphs and disappointments. You may hear the deep longings of a middle-age matron struggling to keep her family together during tough financial times. Or you may hear the fears of a man whose aging has not gone as smoothly, or gracefully, as he expected it to.
Whatever you hear after you’ve opened the conversation door with this elder, treat it respectfully. Treat your visit as the privilege it is. Someone has allowed you a glimpse into his or her inner world.
It may sound like an ordinary story on the surface. But know that how you listened to that elder’s story means far more to her or him than the words spoken. Your time and respectful attention reminded the elder that he or she is still valued.
Do you want to honor an elder today, this week, this month? Please don’t reduce that honor to a calendar-event.
Instead, treat each day’s encounter with an elder – your parent, your spouse, your friend, your first-time acquaintance – as an opportunity to simply listen. Then remember to say “Thank you!”