An American saying that some attribute to actress Bette Davis maintains that getting old is not for softies.
I share the idea: I have always thought that old age is the epic stage of human life.
And it is even more so today, with an increasingly long existence in time but not in the quality of that added time.
With very old but full of ailments, and what is worse, alone, abandoned, invisible.
In other times, the elderly were admired for their resilience, for making our way and passing the witness, for their wisdom and experience.
They were our elders, what a beautiful word, older than us.
Now, on the other hand, we disdain them, we ignore them, not only do they not seem wiser to us, but we consider them obsolete junk, and in addition we feel that their determination not to die is a nuisance, a burden for the community.
It is oldism or ageism, a fierce prejudice that grows stronger every day.
There has probably never been a society that has treated the old as badly as it is today.
Which never ceases to amaze me by the stupidity and lack of foresight of the staff, because in that old age we will all end up (if we are lucky enough not to die young).
¶ And on this miserable breeding ground the coronavirus fell.
It's no wonder the horrors that happened happened.
Amnesty International has published a devastating report, the title of which already says it all:
Left to fend: Lack of protection and discrimination against older people in residences during the pandemic
.
The work denounces the Community of Madrid and Catalonia for "protocols and practices that led to the exclusion of hospital admission" for residents of geriatrics.
And it concludes that five human rights were violated: to health, to life, to non-discrimination, to private and family life, and to a dignified death.
¶ I would add that good sense and empathy, generational co-responsibility, collective self-esteem were also violated.
Because the treatment of our elders in the first wave of the pandemic has been so terrible that it has caused a very deep wound in our society, a traumatic tear that will take us a long time to sew and heal.
And for that, the first thing we have to do is talk about it.
Admit it, damn it.
I wish I could quote here, one by one, the names of all those old men who died in isolation.
And those of the caregivers who tried to tuck them in, as in this beautiful photo of the nonagenarian Elena Pérez's birthday.
You know what?
I have the feeling that, after the overwhelming abandonment that the elderly suffered, Spanish society has felt guilty and has become a little more aware of the value of the elderly, more respectful.
That is, they gave everything for us again;
They went away like a silent rain, and not only did they release respirators and hospital squares, but they also taught us a moral lesson.
Our elders, warriors of the night, silent heroes: my gratitude, my emotional memory and my admiration.
