Keith Robinson / 20 July 2010
I work for an occupational charity that relieves poverty in the architectural profession.
A month or two ago we were looking at our three year forward plan. We talked about finances, likely increases in numbers of beneficiaries and so on and then we came to staff and particularly to succession planning and the rather unnerving fact that by the time the three year plan was up I’d be gone – retired, pensioned off.
This wasn’t entirely a bolt from the blue, of course. I did know it was coming and I had been thinking about it in an off-hand sort of way. But when you see it written down and people start talking about it and making plans for your departure you do suddenly realise that you will soon be joining the ranks of the Elderly.
Of course, there will be no shortage of things to do – painting, singing, learning to play the piano and hopefully one or two other less self-centred activities. And I’m still reasonably physically fit and mentally alert – I’ve got a bit of arthritis in the knees and can’t always remember what I went upstairs for – but nothing too serious at the moment.
But what about later when I’m 70 - or 80, God willing?
Until she died last year we had a neighbour called Rose. She had lived in Addington Square all her life. She was 92, very small, thin, birdlike and fiercely independent. She went out every day to buy food and get the newspaper. No matter what the weather, Rose went out. Torrential rain, gale force winds, heatwaves – nothing stopped her. I have a particular image of her returning home during a snowstorm, the wheels of her shopping trolley jammed with ice and pushing a small drift of snow along the pavement.
Rose was widowed early in life. She had a son and a couple of grandchildren and she cooked lunch for them every Sunday. She also went to see her sister every week. Rose wasn’t mobile enough to get on the bus so, with her shopping trolley for support, she walked. It was about a mile and a half each way.
So, this was Rose’s life. Daily contact in the shops and with neighbours she saw in the street, weekly visit from son and family, regular natter with younger sister.
And then she had a fall and hurt her leg. It wasn’t broken as far as I remember but she couldn’t walk – so she could no longer go out every day. Her son still came to see her and for a little while, with neighbours doing a bit of shopping, she was able to cook his Sunday lunch. And then she had another fall and couldn’t walk at all, not even from room to room in her flat. But she still had all her marbles and there was no way that she was going to leave her home. She couldn’t look after herself so she had carers come in three times a day – up at 8 in the morning, lunch at 12 and back to bed at 5 or sometime at 6. Care visits are necessarily brief, you don’t get much conversation. So apart from the Sunday visits Rose had no-one to talk to, no daily contact with the world, no usefulness to anyone – and so she died.
When the Sant’ Egidio community was first set up by Andrea Riccardi and his fellow students in Rome they were almost all less than 20 years old. Rather like us, the Isaiah community, they opened their doors for evening prayer and waited to see what would happen. The elderly were amongst the first to come along and take part.
“Back then,” they say “we were all young, university or high school students. We did not have a ‘geriatric’ culture nor were we aware that deep transformations were taking place in our society which in a matter of decades would be referred to as the demographic revolution. We were attracted by the elderly because they seemed to be suffering so badly from loneliness and they asked simply for company and support. A mutual feeling arose, we began tuning in to their problems. Even if the taste, culture, language was very different we discovered the possibility of a friendship between generations, between a youngster and an aged person. We could offer them the most precious thing we had: brotherhood. As friends we could help, understand, listen and support them.”
Now I think - I hope - that it would not be too difficult for the Isaiah Community to become friends with some lonely elderly people, for us to help and listen and understand them. There are organisations already set up to bring volunteers and those who need befriending together and to do the CRB checks and the other paperwork.. One, which most of you will already know about, is Southwark Churches Care. So this would not be a new initiative, or something unique to the Isaiah Community, but it would be doing something to meet a real need. Southwark Churches Care has just over 100 volunteers and that is not enough. There is a waiting list of people hoping for someone to come and chat with them for an hour or so.
Or perhaps we could do something with Thomas and his elderly patients.
Maybe we can talk about this at supper next week and work something out which we, as a community, or at least some of us can do to make an old person’s life less lonely, more fulfilled
Isaiah tells us that God will carry us in old age when we may be looking for help, for companionship, for strength, for inner peace:
Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all you who remain of the house of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,
and have carried since your birth.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
In 1998 the Sant’ Egidio community started a “Long Live the Elderly” movement or “Viva gli anziani” It involves both those who help and those who are helped without making any distinction between them. It’s for those who want to live their old age as an opportunity for themselves and for others.
Here’s a part of what someone called Anna wrote to them:
To be honest, maybe the thing that begins to trouble me most is the fact that nobody, for days, weeks, says my name. If there is no-one who says your name it is like if you can’t breathe. Will I end up forgetting it too?
So I said to myself: I must react. What can I do? I can be a friend. A faithful friend, what’s more. Yes. If you are looking for a friend come and visit me. I have time and you will not disturb me. I am interested in what is happening in the world and I would like to listen to your stories, to speak to you. I said to myself “An hour of time”. Yours and mine. To become friends, to be needed by somebody. In the face of loneliness.
A month or two ago we were looking at our three year forward plan. We talked about finances, likely increases in numbers of beneficiaries and so on and then we came to staff and particularly to succession planning and the rather unnerving fact that by the time the three year plan was up I’d be gone – retired, pensioned off.
This wasn’t entirely a bolt from the blue, of course. I did know it was coming and I had been thinking about it in an off-hand sort of way. But when you see it written down and people start talking about it and making plans for your departure you do suddenly realise that you will soon be joining the ranks of the Elderly.
Of course, there will be no shortage of things to do – painting, singing, learning to play the piano and hopefully one or two other less self-centred activities. And I’m still reasonably physically fit and mentally alert – I’ve got a bit of arthritis in the knees and can’t always remember what I went upstairs for – but nothing too serious at the moment.
But what about later when I’m 70 - or 80, God willing?
Until she died last year we had a neighbour called Rose. She had lived in Addington Square all her life. She was 92, very small, thin, birdlike and fiercely independent. She went out every day to buy food and get the newspaper. No matter what the weather, Rose went out. Torrential rain, gale force winds, heatwaves – nothing stopped her. I have a particular image of her returning home during a snowstorm, the wheels of her shopping trolley jammed with ice and pushing a small drift of snow along the pavement.
Rose was widowed early in life. She had a son and a couple of grandchildren and she cooked lunch for them every Sunday. She also went to see her sister every week. Rose wasn’t mobile enough to get on the bus so, with her shopping trolley for support, she walked. It was about a mile and a half each way.
So, this was Rose’s life. Daily contact in the shops and with neighbours she saw in the street, weekly visit from son and family, regular natter with younger sister.
And then she had a fall and hurt her leg. It wasn’t broken as far as I remember but she couldn’t walk – so she could no longer go out every day. Her son still came to see her and for a little while, with neighbours doing a bit of shopping, she was able to cook his Sunday lunch. And then she had another fall and couldn’t walk at all, not even from room to room in her flat. But she still had all her marbles and there was no way that she was going to leave her home. She couldn’t look after herself so she had carers come in three times a day – up at 8 in the morning, lunch at 12 and back to bed at 5 or sometime at 6. Care visits are necessarily brief, you don’t get much conversation. So apart from the Sunday visits Rose had no-one to talk to, no daily contact with the world, no usefulness to anyone – and so she died.
When the Sant’ Egidio community was first set up by Andrea Riccardi and his fellow students in Rome they were almost all less than 20 years old. Rather like us, the Isaiah community, they opened their doors for evening prayer and waited to see what would happen. The elderly were amongst the first to come along and take part.
“Back then,” they say “we were all young, university or high school students. We did not have a ‘geriatric’ culture nor were we aware that deep transformations were taking place in our society which in a matter of decades would be referred to as the demographic revolution. We were attracted by the elderly because they seemed to be suffering so badly from loneliness and they asked simply for company and support. A mutual feeling arose, we began tuning in to their problems. Even if the taste, culture, language was very different we discovered the possibility of a friendship between generations, between a youngster and an aged person. We could offer them the most precious thing we had: brotherhood. As friends we could help, understand, listen and support them.”
Now I think - I hope - that it would not be too difficult for the Isaiah Community to become friends with some lonely elderly people, for us to help and listen and understand them. There are organisations already set up to bring volunteers and those who need befriending together and to do the CRB checks and the other paperwork.. One, which most of you will already know about, is Southwark Churches Care. So this would not be a new initiative, or something unique to the Isaiah Community, but it would be doing something to meet a real need. Southwark Churches Care has just over 100 volunteers and that is not enough. There is a waiting list of people hoping for someone to come and chat with them for an hour or so.
Or perhaps we could do something with Thomas and his elderly patients.
Maybe we can talk about this at supper next week and work something out which we, as a community, or at least some of us can do to make an old person’s life less lonely, more fulfilled
Isaiah tells us that God will carry us in old age when we may be looking for help, for companionship, for strength, for inner peace:
Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all you who remain of the house of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,
and have carried since your birth.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
In 1998 the Sant’ Egidio community started a “Long Live the Elderly” movement or “Viva gli anziani” It involves both those who help and those who are helped without making any distinction between them. It’s for those who want to live their old age as an opportunity for themselves and for others.
Here’s a part of what someone called Anna wrote to them:
To be honest, maybe the thing that begins to trouble me most is the fact that nobody, for days, weeks, says my name. If there is no-one who says your name it is like if you can’t breathe. Will I end up forgetting it too?
So I said to myself: I must react. What can I do? I can be a friend. A faithful friend, what’s more. Yes. If you are looking for a friend come and visit me. I have time and you will not disturb me. I am interested in what is happening in the world and I would like to listen to your stories, to speak to you. I said to myself “An hour of time”. Yours and mine. To become friends, to be needed by somebody. In the face of loneliness.
