Getting old is unavoidable, but not a crime

Getting old is unavoidable, but not a crime

Elderly people face complex hidden problems. The Jakarta
Post's contributor Mehru Jaffer reveals the facts in conjunction
with the National Day of the Elderly that falls on May 29.

JAKARTA (JP): Once upon a time Arifin Hardgakusuma was a
fairly affluent businessman. He owned a leather factory in
Jakarta. He was able to afford an education in the Netherlands
for his younger brother and he traveled to the USA.

As he grew older, Arifin lost his wife and sold his business.
He could no longer find a servant loyal and loving enough to take
care of his home. Eventually the 80 year old Arifin lost, along
with his teeth, the capacity to dream. After every flower and
fruit of love also vanished from his life, he was left with
little choice but to pack his bags and head for Ciputat's Hanna
Home in South Jakarta, where he has been living with 62 others
like himself for the past six months.

His 25-year-old daughter visits him sometimes. Arifin blames
nobody for his fate in the autumn of his life. "The world has
changed. Life is so hectic. Nobody believes in staying at home
anymore. The father, mother and children all go their own way
every day. They seldom meet, they seldom talk. It is all so
different from when I was a child," says Arifin who spends much
of his time reading the Bible, newspapers and books in the Dutch
language.

Imagine yourself also with whitened hair, desires failing and
strength slowly ebbing away. When that happens would you like to
be stored far from the comfort and familiarity of your own home
in a ghetto, no matter how golden? If the answer is no, then try
not to do to the elderly what you would not like done to you in
your old age.

Perhaps all those living in the fast lane and in the prime of
their youth today forget that one day they too shall be little
more than shriveled-up creatures too weak to be on their own.

"There is a denial of the personhood of age because people
cannot bear to think that they will ever be one of those dreary,
decrepit, senile, smelly, isolated, lonely, incontinent,
childlike elderly," Betty Friedan, feminist fatale and author of
The Fountain Of Age once said.

After having spread the mystique of feminism around the world
for over three decades, the fiery Friedan, herself an aging
American, is deep into researching the mystique of age.

At a New York conference entitled "Who is Responsible for My
Old Age?", Friedan is quoted as saying that an imminent
breakthrough in thinking about age will catalyze a new movement
for social change this century comparable to the youth, black and
women's movement of the last 50 years; and it will look at age,
not as a decline from the youthful peak but on its own
terms...requiring new concepts of family...of housing, education,
recreation and medical care as well as new economic and social
policies.

In the meanwhile, stories told by those already working with
the gray population here about the way some of them are treated
by younger members of their families have a stranger than fiction
ring about them.

Mrs. Daud Palilu of the Karya Kasih home in Central Jakarta
tells the tale of Siwabessy, an elderly spinster who spent an
entire life taking care of the three children of her sister who,
along with her husband, perished in a road accident.

Once the orphans were educated and gainfully employed they
left for the Netherlands. Only a few weeks later, after the
abandoned elder was admitted into the home, she was found dead in
her bed with a scarf tied tightly around her neck and a suicide
note beside her.

Siwabessy is yet another inmate who was brought to the home by
a young man who said that he was just a concerned neighbor. Later
it was revealed that he was adopted by the childless Siwabessy
and brought up like her own son. Once her husband died, this
"son" asked Siwabessy to live with him in Bandung. Later he
returned to Jakarta and sold off Siwabessy's family home in
Menteng and pocketed all the money. He then escorted his "mother"
to the care of Mrs. Daud and disappeared.

Anna, 73, has been at the Hanna Home for nearly a decade.
Childless Anna lost her husband 25 years ago. For a while she
lived by herself. She has two brothers in the Netherlands and one
is a doctor at the Pondok Indah hospital but they don't ever see
each other. She is very happy in the home where she helps doctors
who visit the polyclinic twice a week. The only thing that
bothers her now is the terrible headache when her blood pressure
shoots up. Then she closes the door to her room and sleeps off
the pain.

"I may have nobody today but I still have my god," says Anna
whose favorite person is a niece living in Grogol. She may visit
the niece once in a while but she never misses the service at the
church every Sunday.

Jenny, 68, is an unmarried sister from an affluent Palembang
family with businesses in Singapore. She lived with some nieces
and nephews in Jakarta till she had a fall recently and found it
difficult to walk. She is happy to be in this home as she no
longer feels like a burden on anyone. Although aging in the
familiar comfort of one's home is an idyllic option rather than
being in an institution, there is nothing worse for people like
Jenny than the feeling that at their age they must live on the
bitter bread of dependency.

According to Mrs. Daud, homes like her own are not really the
answer to the ballooning population of the aged. She is more in
favor of home care where social workers go to each neighborhood
and organize better living conditions for older people within
their own environment.

At the moment different non-governmental organizations are
running some 55 home care centers around the city where food,
medical care and in some cases even shelter is provided for over
4,000 people. "The city is roughly divided into 300
neighborhoods and we have only 55 home care centers so you can
imagine how much more work is required," Mrs. Daud told The
Jakarta Post.

Although there is no well defined national policy to improve
life for the elderly, without the 16 homes situated in different
parts of the city, life for the old and weak would only be worse.

Father Chandra Udaya, who supervises the Hanna Home, says that
all those who are not younger than 65 years and able to pay Rp
350,000 per month are eligible to stay at the premises that sits
on sprawling grounds landscaped with pretty paths meandering in
between many trees, flower beds and a chapel. This place provides
the elderly not only with a roof over their head but also with a
more vibrant social life and, above all, security.

The eldest at the home is a 97 year old and the youngest one
is 68 years old. Asked what it felt like for a comparatively
younger person like himself to be surrounded by such elderly
people, Father Chandra said that he is aware all the time that
this is his future too.

"I would like to be treated with love and respect when I am
old, the way I try and treat the inmates of this home," he said.

Is that too much to ask for a group of people whose only crime
is that they have grown old?