No country for old men

In a house somewhere in Metro Manila lives a senior citizen all by himself.

I don’t really know much about him except through e-mails he sends me, almost every day, many times a day, usually reactions to my stories from the mundane to the profound; from the critical to the complimentary; from the sad to the funny.

But I have been in front of his house inside a gated subdivision recently because he asked me to pick up some relief goods to pass on to authorities for areas affected by the recent typhoon. He left the goods just by the gate because he didn’t want to risk exposing himself to anyone who might bring him the virus, myself included.

I agreed because why not? I know how much senior citizens need assistance. I know this because when I was growing up, I spent a lot of time helping my grandfather when he was still alive. He was old and in the last years of his life, slow and frail. I regularly took my grandfather’s blood pressure with a manual sphygmomanometer because that was the only apparatus he had; I drove him to places when his personal driver was unavailable. On most days, I didn’t have to do anything except to just be his human cane. And yet, I often wished I did more.

Going back to my senior citizen pen pal, I was shocked to see his house in a sad state of disrepair — rusty grills, overgrown vegetation, etc. He said he is too old to clean or fix it.

I offered to hire someone to help him trim his lawn. I thought it was a small gesture I could do for a senior citizen but he has yet to accept or reject my offer.

How difficult it must be to live alone especially in one’s twilight years. I can’t help but think about the needs of our senior citizens these days.

Is our government doing enough to help the country’s aging citizens aside from the discount cards and senior lanes? I looked into government programs for senior citizens and they’re simply not enough.

Aging population

The Philippines is facing an increasing share of senior citizens from the 12 million count at present.

Based on the 2000 census-based projections, life expectancy at birth for females and males born from 2005 to 2010 stands at 71.64 and 66.11 years, respectively.

Thus, greater support is needed in terms of health care and income since senior citizens are usually not economically active anymore, according to state think-tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) in a 2019 report.

Senior citizens often suffer from several health conditions, take various maintenance medications, and require more interactions with health care providers. Many of them have arthritis, high blood pressure, chronic back pain, and all sorts of allergies, according to government data.

Social protection programs

Sure there are government programs for seniors but as I said, they’re not enough. One government program provides a P500 monthly stipend for senior citizens, corresponding to only 24 percent of the per-capita poverty threshold in 2018, according to the PIDS study.

The government needs to revisit this amount especially in this time of COVID-19. It must also provide more programs for our seniors. The government also needs to ensure that pensions for seniors are able to reach them.

Perhaps LGUs can also have an office dedicated to the needs of senior citizens, an office seniors can call for assistance if they no longer have any living relative or friend, an office that can help them purchase medicines or at least bring them to the doctor in case of emergencies.

The private sector can also come up with their own programs for seniors. They are not dead and they shouldn’t be forgotten.

‘Sailing to Byzantium’

Growing old is inevitable and the end of each passing day brings us one step closer to our deaths but some are closer to the finish line than others. The least we can do is to help make the remaining years of their lives easier.

After all, our elders today belong to generations of Filipinos who are the best and the brightest among us. They are war heroes, great entrepreneurs, the builders of our nation, bosses who helped light our paths and parents and grandparents who did their best despite the challenges of their time.

So let’s do what we can to help them -- have better social programs for them and individually, offer them a seat in public transportation, put them first in line when we see them in a queue, provide them more parking slots in public areas, or simply listen to their stories, their joys and heartaches.

In his poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” William Butler Yeats writes about old age and looks into the pain of living in a country which champions youth but neglects the aged:

“That is no country for old men. The young in one another’s arms, birds in the trees, those dying generations — at their song...”

The answer, says Yeats in his poem, is to leave the country of the young and sail to the holy city of Byzantium, where the sages in the city’s famous gold mosaics could sing to his soul.

Let ours be different. Let our country be a place that nurtures the young but also embraces the aged so they do not have to sail all the way to Byzantium and dream of dreams outside their time.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com.