Redux
Every journey circles home
We might never get cancer. We might never become disabled. We might never go through divorce or poverty. But if we’re lucky, truly lucky, we will grow old. And that simple truth should be the starting point for every discussion about how we treat the elderly in this country.
Yet once again, we talk about an old woman only because her story made the news. A 79-year-old locked inside her home, crying for help, while neighbours shouted into the void of hotlines and departments that never answered. Now she has finally been placed in a home and we, as usual, begin the blame game. Who called when? Who didn’t? Who followed protocol?
Let’s stop pretending that we can prevent every individual tragedy. The state cannot enter every house, cannot listen through every wall. What is absurd is not that it fails to do so, but that we continue to believe that each “isolated incident” is somehow exceptional. These stories never stop. They multiply.
Countless elderly people suffer quietly in the same reality, who need help to have dignity. We only learn about them when their stories appear on our phone screens. People who need assistance just to shower, go to the toilet, wash their clothes, or have a meal. Some sit all day on a sofa, not eating until someone brings them food in the afternoon. Others haven’t seen their children for months, or have children living abroad who can do nothing but call and worry from afar.
Our approach, therefore is ridiculous, politicians, media, society alike. We rush to condemn, then move on until the next scandal. Meanwhile, the same politicians who cry for reform are the ones who pick up the phone to interfere in the welfare system for votes, pushing genuine cases further down the list. And this is a crime.
There is only one honest way forward: to create a clear, automatic process once people reach a certain age, services, structures, and priorities that do not depend on numbers, who happens to call or what makes headlines.
Old age is not a tragedy, neglect is. And if we are lucky enough to grow old, we will want to live in a country that treats the elderly not as forgotten burdens, but as human beings who have already paid their dues.