Community duty to take care of elders

Earlier this month, during a breakfast gathering with state Sen. Eric Barlow, a Cody resident asked the gubernatorial candidate about his plan to care for seniors and their mental health, then implored him not to forget the unique needs faced by community elders.

An easy, knee-jerk response would have been, “Don’t we all have a mental health crisis?” but the sense that we forget our seniors is widespread. In most places that we’ve been or lived, we have heard a similar refrain: that our community’s elders are forgotten or unwanted, that they withdraw and grow isolated, and that there is no room left for them in wider society.

This idea is wrong on multiple levels and we need to work collectively to remediate it. We do need our elders for their wisdom, for their histories, for their stories. Historically, generations have worked in tandem with each other and all people have had a role in community and society, and it’s only in recent times that we’ve seen a fall-off as older people and their constellation of needs – which are not at all dissimilar from that of those younger than they – ignored. This change divorces us from the social, community-based nature that we all share as human beings, and places our value on our productivity and output, instead.

Elders in our community share many of the same wants and many of the same needs, mentally and emotionally, medically and personally. Their experiences are also unique and distinct from that of younger people, given not only their lived experiences, but also the limitations that come with age and the changes that eventually arise, necessitating the need for help or support outside of oneself and the immediate family.

The city’s recent decision to partner with the Cody Senior Center on securing medical transport to Billings, the Performing Arts Workshop for Seniors that was spearheaded by Lynne Simpson, the questions fielded by Sen. Barlow and here in our own opinion pages reflect the constellation of these wants and needs, how the conversation continues to evolve, and where we need to look next.

One of my favorite essay collections, “The Empathy Exams,” taught me a refrain I still use today, which is that suffering is not a competition. It is easy to become myopic and think only of what we are facing in our own lives, but our own struggles aren’t in combat with that of our neighbor’s; neither of us trump one another because the stress we feel – or the hurt, or the isolation – is real and that’s enough. The easy, knee-jerk response is the wrong one. And so, what we can and should do for each other instead, the book posits, is treat each other compassionately and find novel solutions to alleviate that stress and pain.

These programs, and the efforts made to include our elders in society, to alleviate the pain or isolation that they may feel privately, are worthy of support. But there are still miles left for us to go and it is imperative that we work collectively and in partnership to better their lives.