How Much Do you Know about the Old?
It is the sympathy of the heroine in Rebecca, the novel I have been reading these days, for an old blind woman that makes me ponder and inspires me to write this article.
“…Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in his bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, ‘Well, that clears my conscience for three months’ ?”
I could not read on for the moment, my mind having gone back to something happened around me some years ago. There was an aged woman from my next door neighbor, maimed and dependent, her husband gone, her hearing defective. She lived with her two sons and daughter-in-laws, and her grandsons, who regarded her as nothing but a troublesome nuisance. Often, when late at night, I would hear her desperate moaning, asking for her daughter-in-law’s help, in agony. But there was only silence, dead silence. Nobody answered; nobody opened the door and took a look at her(I could hear, if they did); nobody cared. Her helpless voice went on and off, until it lost in despair, failing to take its effect. I dared not to imagine what would happened to her next, and how she would feel when everyone turned a deaf ear to her affliction. No, I dreaded to think.
When I stay at home on vacation, sometimes I can also see my grandma sitting in her chair, lost in thought. Never have I ventured to ask what she is thinking about. She confines her hobbies to drinking tea and watching TV programs only, and often goes to bed early at 8pm, after whiling away some time on the TV programs that she may not understand at all, as she understands no other languages except for the local dialect. She lies on bed, but never falls asleep at ease. I wonder what is in her mind. Her past? Her future? I never know, and maybe will never know until I am old.
I wish I could be rich enough, and I would build a big home of warmth, of love, for the aged who are in miserable, desperate condition so that they could lead a happy life remaining to them and leave this world with peace and smile. But I know that money is not a cure-all, nothing but our concern and love can bring to the aged the real meaning and happiness of life.
Some day, we will all get old and the same wretched situation may come upon us. We are now young, vigorous, and enjoying our youth, but the day will come, no matter you like or not, no matter you are ready or not.
