Grey Hair is a Crown of Splendour Melinda Selmys Originally published in Issue XV of Vulgata, September, 2004.

It was once written that “Grey hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.” (Prov. 16:31) The writer of this proverb shared with many biblical writers – and many Christian and Jewish commentators who have followed – a belief that old age is a blessing that God bestows upon those He loves. In this they were hardly alone: most human cultures throughout most of history have revered the elderly, seeing them as living vessels of tradition and wisdom. Whether it is the bearded sage of Chinese saga, or the grey-haired council of elders passing the peace pipe around and advising the life of a native American tribe, respect for the abilities and experience of older people has tended to be a norm. Why then, in our current culture, do we find that the situation is almost entirely reversed? No longer are grandparents the esteemed purveyors of timeless advice to the younger generation – instead they are perceived as foolish, incompetent, forgetful,  crotchety old geezers, or, at best, as eccentric but endearing characters, full of funny old ideas, towards whom we can exercise a sort of patronizing good will.

The effects of these perceptions are far from innocuous. According to the American Association of Geriatric Psychology, the rate of suicide amongst older adults is higher than amongst any other age group – soaring to over twice the national rate for those over 85. 15% of people over 65 suffer from depression, and this statistic rises alarmingly to over 50% for those confined to nursing homes. We live in a society where the age of the average person is currently rising due to falling birth rates, and where medical science is continually prolonging our life expectancy, which means that the plight of the elderly is increasingly becoming the plight of our culture. Unfortunately, in our present cultural climate, the desire to take responsibility for this situation is slight. We idolize youthfulness and eschew the elderly as senile and disabled, while popular culture pushes a “me-first” morality that encourages the out-of-control consumption of various luxuries in preference to thrift and self-sacrifice. Given these conditions, it is hardly surprising that the young are less than willing to step up to the plate and take responsibility for older relatives who are seen as a burden and considered no longer able to contribute meaningfully to society. It is also hardly surprising that euthanasia and assisted suicide are pressed forward as “compassionate” alternatives for elderly people who, through neglect, negative stereotyping, and general ill treatment have become depressed and confused about the meaning of their lives.

There seem to be a number of contributing factors that have brought about this state of affairs. The first is hardly new, but has been gaining momentum over the course of the past centuries and is now so fundamental to our culture that it seems almost impossible to change it. We are, and have been for some time, a people infected with the myth of progress – rather than believing (as most cultures, historically, have done) that we are living in a world fallen from grace, in which the past is full of heroes and great deeds while the present is altogether rather shabbier, we believe that each generation is making great strides towards a future utopia in which man will be a more peaceful, intelligent, highly evolved species. From this there follows, quite naturally, the fallacy of modernism: the belief that because an idea is new, because it departs from tradition and strikes out upon new paths it must, therefore, be not only a good idea but a much better idea than the one it seeks to replace.

If a culture really believes this – as ours certainly does, if not explicitly then implicitly – it will be practically impossible to confer dignity and respect upon the old. Elderly people have long been considered the treasure-house of traditional wisdom – and with good reason – but if we reject ideas on the basis that they have not changed since the time of our supposedly “primitive” ancestors, then it follows that the “wisdom” of the old amounts to nothing more than a heap of out-dated, obsolete and antediluvian prejudices. Thus, in place of our reverence for the grey-headed sage, we construct a cult of the adolescent, glorifying the young as the torch-bearers of the future, the pinnacle of human development, and the pioneers of the golden road to perfection. Thus equipped, the young feel completely justified in dismissing their elders, and as we age we become increasingly unwilling to let go of our youth – whether we fight it by attending seminars to release our inner child, or by smearing our faces with miraculous “anti-aging” acid peels. When it finally becomes impossible to convince ourselves that we are still hip, modern and avant-garde, we lose, in some sense, our sense of our own importance. Society has equipped us to see the old as living fossils, irrelevant curiosities outside the stream of any really important developments, and when at last we reach this unenviable state, we naturally feel confused about the purpose and meaning of our continued existence, and insecure about our value as human beings.

Finding themselves in this position, many elderly people are further burdened by the lack of any support network capable of attending to their needs. In past generations, the growing belief in the powers of human progress was prevented from fully exercising its brutal condemnation of old age by the force of loyalty and love within the family. Even if the old, as such, had theoretically passed the peak of their functional usefulness, grandma was still a tough old bird and a venerable matriarch to whom her large and extended brood were expected to show some respect. However, as the coherence of Western family life breaks down, the elderly are less and less able to rely upon the love and reverence even of their own descendants. To a certain degree, this is the result of the older generations reaping what they have sown: those who fought for the legalization of birth control and divorce in the earlier part of the century are now finding that their well-planned two-child families have produced two or three grand-children and one ex-daughter-in-law who have little respect for the sanctity of family life – hardly a promising foundation upon which to build hopes of a comfortable, nurturing old-age.

Even those who have had larger families may still have problems because of the break-down of the family community. With the advent of the nuclear family, children have become less likely to live in the same area as their parents once they grow up, and the involvement of grandparents and great-grandparents in the lives of their descendants is often confined to infrequent visits on holidays or special occasions. While studies repeatedly show that for the elderly, and especially for the very old, regular contact with the younger generation and with family members is one of the greatest indicators both of happiness and longevity, younger family members are often reluctant to arrange long or frequent visits because they worry that the presence of small children will “tire” their aging relatives. Thus the meaningful family contact that many centenarians cite as the primary cause of their long life, is simply unavailable to many older people, while the younger generations don't have the opportunity to form close bonds from which they might come to realize and respect the wisdom that the elderly have to offer them.

What this means, for many elderly people, is that once they reach the point where they are no longer able to live independently, they are placed instead in the care of the medical establishment. Unfortunately, much of Western medicine is infected with the notion that a patient is an ill-informed unco-operative creature, while the doctor is a tower of highly-specialized knowledge whose judgment should be conceived as absolute. The elderly patient, who is further handicapped by the negative stereotypes that pervade our culture, is considered a particularly difficult and undesirable patient. In many areas, this is further exacerbated by the fact that there is a lack of trained nurses or doctors who have an interest in working with the elderly, which means that those who end up in geriatric care are often those who were unable to get work anywhere else. This means that those who, lacking the support of family and community, end up in nursing homes, are often placed in the care of understaffed facilities in the care of nurses who have no particular love of the elderly and would rather be working elsewhere. To make matter worse, those whose families are least involved are most likely to end up in the worst institutions. Families who care strongly for their elderly members, but who merely lack the necessary skills and resources to provide for them at home are more likely to contribute financially and to take the time and trouble necessary to find the best available care. On the other hand, those who lack descendants, or who are perceived merely as a burden, are likely to be put into the cheapest available facility and left there, unvisited and understandably depressed, until they finally die.

Amidst such a host of negative facts and images, it is hardly surprising that most people in this culture are terrified of growing old. And yet the proper attitude towards aging – that expressed in scripture and repeated throughout the history of the Church – is one of acceptance and gratitude. It is not the final rattling of a decrepit building about to topple into ruin, but the final preparation of a human soul approaching union with God.

In old age, “it is natural to revisit the past in order to attempt a sort of assessment. This retrospective gaze makes possible a more serene and objective evaluation of persons and situations we have met along the way.” (Pope John Paul II, Letter to the Elderly)  It is a time to reflect upon the past, to come to terms with our life, to forgive wrongs which, having been done to us in youth have, though the softening of years, lost some of their sting. It is also a time to pass on the lessons that we have learned in life, and to confer the benefit of experience upon younger generations. It is also a time of greater leisure, which for those who retain their good health can mean the taking up of new hobbies or the development of old ones for which they have never really had the time, and which, even for those who suffer from sickness and disability, allows for longer periods of quiet, uninterrupted prayer. It is thus, far from being the lengthening of wasted and useless years, a time at which our life on earth is brought to its fulfillment, and our final preparation made for the life of the world to come.(1)

For those of us who are still in our youth, the dignity of the aged leaves us with a number of responsibilities. In the first place, it is our duty to seek to re-inform the culture that we live in, to undermine negative stereotyping and to encourage greater respect for the elderly in our own communities. We can begin by teaching our own children to respect older relatives, and by inviting the elderly to be involved in their lives. Those who have great contact with real people who are old, rather than merely with media stereotypes, are more likely to develop a genuine respect and appreciation for their gifts and personalities. We should also be willing to make sacrifices in order to include our elderly relatives in our lives – whether this means inviting our mother to come and live with us, or merely making the time to visit with grandma on a regular basis. It is also necessary to keep in mind that, for the elderly, the ability to pass on knowledge and wisdom is important – it provides them with the feeling that they have something meaningful to contribute, that they are not merely a burden and drain on other people, and that the fruits of their experience will not fall in vain. Conversely, from this we will gain a greater knowledge and understanding of our history, the friendship of genuinely interesting people, and in many cases a host of skills that we would otherwise not have had the opportunity to learn.

Finally, we must realistically accept the fact that we, too, are going to age. We must plan, not merely for our retirement at 65 when we hope to tour the world and golf in Florida, but to real old age, to our 80s and 90s when we will stand in need of the loving support of family. If we do not forge the relationships now, bear the children now, and form the habits of self-giving and prayer now that will provide the basis of our future happiness, then those things will not be in place when we need them. In choosing to live a healthy and moral life, in exercise our obligations to our own elderly relatives, and in placing our lives in the service of God and family, we make provision for our own old age, so that we may wear our grey hairs as a crown of splendour and not of thorns.

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(!) Errol Morris's film, Fog of War, provides an excellent example of how the experience and reflection of the elderly can be effectively communicated to provide younger generations with a deeper, wiser understanding of the world around them.