Simple things can often make the most difference I was reminded about this when I visited with an elderly friend a few weeks ago. Academic treatises and blogs about flourishing are important, but what does it all mean on a day-to-day practical level?
The care of the elderly has been in the news lately. In Britain there have been scandals about carers not giving sufficient care to their charges. They are paid less than minimum wage and rush their 10 minute appointments, cutting corners, staying only five minutes and then not washing or feeding them properly. The care of the elderly is shameful. What does it say about our society? Care is a vocation and an under-rated one at that. Moral philosophy and the feminist ethics of flourishing in which the ethics of care is part and parcel is a larger subject for another day.
I really enjoy spending time with my elderly friend, Joe. He’s 81 years old and was widowed four years ago when his wife suddenly passed away from a terminal illness after more than 50 years of marriage. However he has adapted surprisingly well and is very resilient. He’s got the usual aches and pains of an 81 year old but is essentially healthy. His biggest issues are that his hearing and eyesight aren’t what they used to be. Still he’s self-sufficient and doesn’t complain. His is the generation of the stiff upper lip. He was an only child born in the Depression years to older parents who have long since passed. He is self sufficient and above all is a human being just like me. I don’t tell this story to minimize his humanity or his agency. He is first and foremost a person, not a cause, not someone in need of rescuing or someone to be pitied.
One of the biggest issues for the elderly is loneliness and isolation. Even though Joe has married adult children with children who are in regular contact with him and even though he is an elder in his church and quite active in the life of the church, he is lonely. And he is one of the more privileged seniors who have children and grandchildren who love him and spend time with him. He isn’t as socially isolated as many of his peers and yet he spends a disproportionate amount of time on his own. He wouldn’t want anyone’s pity and I suspect most of his peers, both those more and those less fortunate, don’t either. They want to be connected, they want their lives to matter, they want to count, they want to be part of society, not left on the shelf.
Anyhow, what was I able to do to give something back to him, to make his life a little better? Well, it was easy and surprising. My husband and I gave him an old IPad two years ago that we weren’t using anymore. This is a person, who when he retired in the early 1990’s decided not to touch a computer again, that was his wife’s interest, not his. His children and grandchildren thought we were crazy for giving him the Ipad and didn’t think he’d use it.. We taught him how to use it and with every visit, I was able to teach him more about how to download his daily newspaper, the electronic version of the Economist, the BBC website, how to text and eventually, to my surprise, how to Face Time. He took to using the tablet like a duck to water and it accompanies him everywhere, even on a trip a trip abroad to visit one of his relatives. He was amazed at how he could keep up during that trip with his daily newspaper and weather reports on his trip even though he was thousands of miles from home. He now sends texts, emails and FaceTimes his children and grandchildren who are always delighted and still surprised to hear from him.
On one of my visits with him he was cross because his electronic version of the Economist wasn’t downloading fast enough. Turns out he’d inherited a wireless router from one of his children over four years ago and it was no longer working properly. I was able to buy and install a new wireless router for him. Then, I was able to contact his cable company and update his broadband package to better suit his needs. Now his broadband speed is sufficient for all his increasing data needs including googling, something he asked me to teach him about as well! He now is downloading all kinds of things….reminder, teach him about cyberfraud asap! 🙂 He still refuses to do Facebook which I think is no bad thing even though I am an avid user. He values his privacy and doesn’t understand why the ‘youth of today’ don’t.
Finally, on my last visit with him, I noticed when we were watching a film together, he couldn’t hear the dialogue. He is very hard of hearing, but I hadn’t appreciated how hard, until this visit. The sound on his t.v. is terrible. I was inspired to buy and install a sound bar for him. He was amazed that he could actually hear his favorite TV shows without the closed captioning. I came to see him one day astonished to find out he’d been listening to radio stations through the sound bar on his television. He is a lover of classical music and even though he had a good CD player with speakers in another room, listening to classical music stations on the television where he had his books and IPad and comfy chair all set up, revolutionized his world.
Simple modern technology, not even very expensive, can be a tool to connect elders to family, friends, to old friends and to facilitate their hobbies such as listening to music and reading political news magazines. Loneliness and isolation are such a big thing and yet it didn’t take much to reduce Joe’s isolation. All it took was an old IPad and a friend that was willing, with their own limited IT skills (I am a user of IT, but by no means an IT expert up to the minute with all the latest software and gadgets!) to help connect this person to their friends, family and the wider world. I wonder how many more elderly could benefit from this kind of IT support? Thoughts?