The society has the wonderful genre of people known as the old/aged ones. In spite of their lively name their heart at this age completes the life cycle and again becomes the heart of a small child. It’s a tough time for them – they seem it as the last stage of their life but is it so? Being confined to the bed most of the times with occasional tours, or a wheelchair, or a nurse to accompany every time, a frail person is being taken care of as a small child. And this is true as far as facts go. But what is also true and radiant is there’s so much more in the person lying in the bed in a fragile and helpless condition. There is so much more to the person then his/her visible condition, wrinkled eyes, stranded hands and effortless smile. But most people doesn’t bother or don’t Intel to go beyond this visible facts. They find it easier to just stake what they see – they find it easier to express their helplessness on their face.
This people are living their second childhood – where they indeed want to be taken care off and when they smile indulgently wiping out the entire history of innumerable dimension person they are. The people who have lived a LIFE. The complete dimensions shows in such person. But people never see this – what they see is an aged, helpless person with people around to take care or sometimes not. What should be seen is beyond that – the whole lot more.
The old person who was a bright student or the champion sport player in the young days, the first one in the family to study and go abroad, the first one in the family to venture a new thing as a career, the person who went all his or her way to follow the dreams. The person who eloped with the love of their life or the person who merely engaged in the social machine of marriage or someone who donated his/her entire life for the society – or someone who did not marry for the sake of his/her younger siblings.
The radiant good looking gentlemen and the lady at their young age and preceding years, working damn hard and earning all sweat in bucks to fulfill responsibilities, the bringing up of children, all such heavy responsibilities. The working mother juggling office and baby or the working father – juggling office and family. The person who lived and succeeded his/her artistic sense. The widow left to rebuild her life or the alone husband left to take care of himself alone. Who have gone through this sad adolescence, the doting mother and father, the loving or the disciplined mother-in-law, the evergreen grandparents.
You see a PERSON. A person with a history who led a fun full and fulfilling life, who loved, lost and then found peace and contentment in whatever circumstances, life thrust upon them. You will see stories in their wrinkles, laughter in their eyes, hurts in their deep heart, joy in their smiles and divinely words in their words.
So what do you see when you look at the aged people around you? Do you see them as objects of pity? Or a waste of time? A drain to your resources? Do you feel anger because they are casting depressing shadow on the best years of your adult life? Do you feel guilty because you feel you don’t do enough? Does all this things make you feel angry or sad? Or do you fear that one day you too would turn like that.
We all at some or the other point faces some of these issues and there’s absolute no shame in it. It is universal. We should not be shameful due to this. This shame will only create differences and distance. Which is just not the right time. This time is not meant to build the distance. It’s the time when we need to hug them even closer. Make them feel so good about themselves and their not bothering condition. They need love.
The one way to deal with this is to look beyond their tired wrinkles and sagging flesh. To see beyond this – to see the emerging PERSON who has lived a LIFE. People leave us before we are able to make them realize this history and the pleasant truth. So why to waste the time when they are still with us. 🙂
Use the time to sit and talk about the past, giggle about the funny times spend, all the fights and foolishness that took place in family, all the occasions and parties celebrated, the love of being together, pull out the old big fat albums and indulge. Make this things happen and pay a tribute to their life. That’s when we remember the old as the people they were. We should aim to give them their life’s back once they depart them. Why not do this when they are still around with us to appreciate it.
SANGITA MAITY.
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