The Darkest Hour for the Aged
- Fin Ramli
- May 21, 2018
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 26, 2018
The statistics of the little red dot’s baby boomers are increasing fast and more young Singaporeans are abandoning their social obligations.
How would you imagine spending your old age?
I, like most, would hope to spend my last days with my children and grandchildren - that those small hands I held when they were born and learning to walk, would be the very same hands that would hold me as I age. I would imagine spending the days in laughter, running after my 3-year-old grandson in the park, surrounded by everything that brings me joy and peace.
But sometimes I also imagine waking up to an empty home, having to go through the old age, wheelchair-bounded, with nothing but the companion of the television. No phone calls and no home visits, confined within the four walls of my house. How would my grandchild even look like then? I would hear an echo at the back of my head from when my son last said, “I’ll see you soon, Ma.” I imagined how that phrase will just be another hollow shell of empty promises.
While these are just thoughts of an unpromised future, that is the sad reality for Mr Leman Yahya, 78, and his wife, Mdm Rajimah, 77, whose children had grown too big out of their arms and eventually, out of their home. Married for over 50 years with four sons, it seems like all the couple has now, is each other. Once a healthy man who rode his bicycle daily to work and Geylang, he now sits on a wheelchair with no company but his wife as they both continue to grow deeper into their twilight years.
Old is 'Burden'
The couple’s lives took a turn for the worst after one of Mr Leman’s epilepsy episodes nearly caused him his life. With no one else to turn to, Mdm Rajimah had to single-handedly attend to her unconscious husband as she waited for the ambulance to arrive. Their children? Unreachable.
Through days and nights, Mdm Rajimah attended to her husband alone for three months as he remained immobile on the hospital bed.
“Sometimes it’s difficult because I want to update them about their father but it’s hard to reach them. If I don’t, they’ll blame me for not trying to tell them,” the 77-year-old recounted.
My heart was heavy. Like a sinking ship, and I was reminded of my aging grandparents - how they brought me up when my parents were away. I thought about how they had many sleepless nights waiting for me to come home, how they cooked, cleaned and taught me to be a good person with zero education. My heart ached. How could one used the sharpness of their tongue to a mother who taught them how to speak? Filial piety doesn't need a code, but it is indeed easier said than done.
The unavoidable conclusion is that as a society, we have stopped valuing the elderly. In the pursuit of happiness, getting the kids to school, saving money for that dream kitchen renovation and finding time to keep house, we have let slide our obligations to the elderly, and worse, relegated them to be a burden. The ugly truth is, many have denied the elderly intrinsic worth.
In 2017, The Straits Times reported that there is an increased demand for elderly care facilities as the number of abandoned pioneers continue to grow, especially in nursing homes. Singapore is one of the fastest ageing societies in the world: by 2030, one in four people - almost a million people, will be aged 65 and above, double the number today.
Caring Hearts for the 'Hard to Care'
The drastic change in demographics in the coming years results in more organisations and centres offering services to care for the old.
Like some, Mr Leman is currently being taken care of by his wife and a volunteer from Calvary Community Care (C3) under the Befriending programme. It is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to reach out to and engage lonely seniors through home visits and coordinate social activities for them with the help of volunteers. The organisation started in 2010 to serve the needy in the community regardless of race, age, gender or religion.
‘Befriending’ is one of the programmes that C3 organized to offer the elderly supportive, reliable relationships through befrienders to socially isolated elderly. What’s more heartbreaking is that most of the befrienders for the old are not even Singaporean.
Mr Leman’s volunteer friend, Miss Liu Jiameng, a 21-year-old Singapore Management University (SMU) student from China, who signed up for the service to accumulate her Community Involvement Programme (CIP) points though she had no regrets, she did mentioned t me about how this elder abandonment isn't a big issue in where she was from.
How come is caring for the old is a normal thing for the foreigners but it is an alienated idea for us? Haven't we been taught enough that taking care of our aging parents is a vital part of life? I question our integrity. Is it hypocrisy to agree that the old need us but we haven't exactly done anything to make them feel like we are there if they do? Are we simply giving a politically correct answer that, to be brutally honest, has no meaning for us?
Jiameng's case goes to show that schools now have to start reinforcing CIP points as a criterion for graduation because there is little to no considerations being practiced in today’s generation to care for the elderly.
More domestic workers are being hired to do the caring. It’s so many, that there is a scheme by Silver Pages Singapore to train these foreigners into taking care their aging parents. Such initiatives only give more reasons for children to skip taking the responsibilities onto their own shoulders.
The biggest question arise: How could a parent care for all his children but not even one of them can care for him?
Elder abandonment is one of the most under-reported type of domestic abuse worldwide, with its victims and witnesses often staying silent for fear of complete loss of relationship and defamation. Cases like Mr Leman’s may be the tip of the iceberg.
The Painful Question
Results from a poll of 2,000 Singaporeans and permanent residents by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in 2018 showed that a majority of those surveyed said the responsibility of taking care of older people in society lies with one’s family and the Government.
About 73 per cent of respondents in the telephone survey said the family bears the primary responsibility for taking care of their senior relatives, while seven in ten (69 per cent) ranked the Government as either first or second in importance for this role.
In my opinion, the government is doing some of its best to ensure the eldery continue to age gracefully with dignity. Food and financial aids as well as health benefits are provided. But where is the rest of us? If most believe it is their own personal responsibilities to care for the aged, how come the duty is still being passed to strangers? How much exactly are the children doing to help caring for those in their own parents?
Despite a widening community network that is striving to ease the pioneers’ loneliness and make sure they're taken care of, in their final years, where are those who agreed that it is their duty to look after the old?
"I'm too busy with work. I pay to make sure my mom is well taken care off. Afterall, I don't really know how to care for her." Yes, you can pay for more nurses, better nursing homes and accessible aged care services, but none of it is a substitute for the investment of family.
As the generation continues to emphasize on materialism, the meaning of being filial soon shifted into providing money instead of physically being there for the old. While most believe that money can't buy us everything, I feel like we all are trying to get away from the trouble of caring for the old with the provision of paper dollars. This trend is clearly observed by the 2017 Giving Index when Singaporeans were found to be more generous with donating money but ot so much with spending time for volunteerism. The root cause? "Aiya give them enough money, someone else can do it for us what."
Mr Leman, like most elderly said that money isn’t always the issue. “The government gives enough for us to get by and put food on the table.” What’s lacking is emotional support. Your $50,000 annual pay to ‘provide better care’ for your parents will never be a proxy for the attentive loving care which is the strongest medicine of all.
How hard is it to put aside some time to drop by for a visit? To call and ask how they are doing? If our parents are too busy to bring us to visit our grandparents, why don't we start taking the initiative to do it ourselves? Why is it that the school needs to start giving out CIP incentives to graduate to get students to be more involved in the community and start inculcating the care and concern that is long forgotten in the young?
The erosion of the consideration and respect for the elderly is a prevailing problem that should not be ignored. The ageing population is not an invisible entity - they should be valued in their advancing years as we valued them when they were young, productive and mobile.
At what point do you think should we start teaching the younger generation that being responsible starts from serving their parents? There is need to remind them that being successful does not equivalate to a loaded bank account but lies in the happiness they give their parents. What more could be done to ensure they would carry this ‘burden’ of the world on their shoulders with pride?
Getting a specialist to care for your aging parent is not the same as restoring dignity and meaning to a life. This is a distinction for us to consider, myself included - for how we treat our elders today is how we might expect to be treated by our children tomorrow.
Now, imagine again – if what goes around comes around, how would YOUR old age look like to you?
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