“I don’t believe it”, conjures up the image of the grumpy
old Victor Meldrew as portrayed on TV by Richard Wilson - amusing, but sadly
stereotypical of the intolerant characteristics attributed to older people.
Then there is Dot Cotton, a devoutly Christian lady of the East End, who drinks
sherry (“I don’t drink. Just a small one then”) and clings to her anachronistic
hymns, quoting from the Authorised Version of the Bible. Dot embodies all that
is popularly seen as the intransigent conservatism of the elderly and the
irrelevance of the traditional Church of England.
"Old age is forever
stereotyped", writes Penelope Lively, quoting Simone de Beauvoir, who
pointed out decades ago that we regarded old age as "something alien, a foreign
species". For an actor to be asked to act an older person still seems to involve the parody of shuffling along with a walking frame or assuming signs of dementia. The media
seem to do their level best to reinforce the age-old myths about aging people.
But what does it mean to be elderly in the 21st
century? When do you become “old”? When I was younger, people who were 60 all seemed
old to me, a legacy of the war partly, but now I’ve turned 60 too and I don’t feel
old yet. I’m pretty fit and active physically and mentally. We are all very
different and life-expectancy has increased, so the group labelled as “elderly”
is now a very disparate group ranging from people in their 60s suffering
illness or disabilities to extraordinary 90+ year olds who live a very active
life.
Michelle Hanson wrote in The Guardian (06/10/13), “Some
friends recently visited Paris, where they saw old people in restaurants with
their families, drinking wine. Bliss! Here we offer tea dances and singalongs
for a separate group of what seem to be rather simple-minded charity cases.”
How patronizing it is to expect us all to drop into the
stereotype! I don’t wear beige and happily wear purple (see Jenny Joseph “When
I am old”). The rock ‘n’ roll culture has now matured and some musicians are
still rocking past seventy.
Older people are as varied in their abilities and desires as
any other group, perhaps even more varied. We may easily make assumptions about
what “they” might like based on our own or historic images that have been blown
away in recent times with health care, longer life and more exciting opportunities.
As Christians we must not perpetrate the myth that beyond a certain age
everybody homogenises into a grey mass, but love and serve each person as they
are and as God does.
What is important is to get to know the older people already
around us that we don’t know so well, those who have chosen not to “join in” or
who seem stand-offish, those reaching the retirement age who move in, but don’t
seem to want to “get involved”. Maybe they are not like us cultural, psychologically
or socially. How have the needs of this group (if it is a group) changed as the
years have gone by? Maybe some don’t want or need the coffee mornings, bingo and
sing-along tea parties that churches and villages offer now. I for one don’t. What
new things ought we to consider organising in our communities that are really relevant
in the 21st century for the active and spirited group formerly known
as “the elderly”? Any ideas?
