Sounds of Aging

 

        The placement of a telephone in a majority of homes provides a unique window for an operator into the lives and special situations that exist for human beings as they age in our society today.  I work as a telephone operator and frequently help elderly customers to perform routine tasks that others may take for granted.  Among the average of a thousand calls a day I as an operator am required to handle,  a good percentage is for the elderly person with his or her varied needs.  I encounter loneliness and  longing, injury and disability, abandonment and depression, abuse and crimes against the elderly.  I am the fly on the wall in the homes of people who are dealing with their own aging issues.  Here are some  examples of signs of aging I have witnessed from my special perch at the end of the telephone wire.

        “What time is it?  Is it morning or night?”  (Blindness)  There are many, many calls of this nature.

        “Operator, I’m trying to reach my mother and father.”  (very elderly voice-dementia)

        “What?”  (deafness)

        “Operator, I need to call my son George.  Can I deposit the coins after he answers?”  (abandonment)  Collect block, he never answers.  She is always hopeful and patient.  George’s agitated wife will sometimes get on the line and give her the brush off. 

        “Operator, my son stole all my money and stuck me in this nursing home.”  (the phone is always busy, and has a collect block)

        Tom  (playful old man in nursing home or rehab hospital)  I believe he is in a wheelchair.  .  He sings Irish songs and talks about Bill Clinton.  Sometimes his lively voice is deadened and slurred by medication. 

         A gent in the 508 area code has lost his sight due to macular degeneration.  He is learning daily how to cope with this disability and its accompanying frustration.

        “Operator,  get me the police, please.  They’re kicking in my back door.  I don’t know what they want.  I can’t get out of bed.”  This was a weak female invalid and prospective victim.  Old people are convenient targets of crime.

        “Operator, I fell down and I think I broke my hip again.  Will you please call my daughter for me?”  I stayed on the phone with this sweet lady until her daughter and son-in-law arrived to help her where she lay on the bathroom floor.  She spoke sadly of the loss of independence she would now experience with this new injury.  She was certain she  would have to leave her home.

        “What day is this?  Are taxes paid?”  Grace is a former cost accountant, now in her eighties who is forever worried about money although she is well off financially.  She lives across from a school and watches the children play outside her window.  On the weekends she is very lonely and bored.

        Minnie is an Italian lady, a widow, who lives in Boston’s North End.  She’s never had children, her family is gone and she is alone.  She loves to talk about her past

 because her future is dismal.  She says she lived too long.

        Peg is 77, and worries daily that her alcoholic and abusive husband of 50 years, will come home from the VFW and beat her to death.  The last time I talked with her I connected her to an abuse hotline.  

        Coral lives with her controlling son who tells her daily that no one cares about her.  She begged me to call her once in a while to prove to him that someone cared.

        I remember an elderly lady who said she wanted to kill herself, lamenting that life wasn’t worth living.  I listened  awhile and connected her to a son-in-law who was surprised to hear she was so despondent.  She told him, “I want to do away with myself.”

        Many others  feel left behind by technology and can’t handle automated systems.  I often wonder how isolated some elderly folk are forced to become because they can’t complete a phone call for simple reasons like an area code change.  

        Based on my experience as an operator dealing with customers with real issues of aging,  I believe the cultural attitude of American people towards issues of aging is of indifference.  I don’t believe the majority of Americans care deeply about older people and their issues.  There seems to be an air of separatism where if one keeps the issue at a distance it may go away and not happen to oneself.  Old people may be rejected because  younger people don’t want to be reminded that aging is a part of the human experience.  People may care for awhile but if this is going to take up too much of their time, please go away.  “You may be in it for the long term, but not me,” seems to be an attitude of some.

          Disassociation from the elderly person and their various problems and needs may be a way for some to keep their sense of humor and their sanity.  People don’t want to be bummed out, tied down with, and entwined in the needs of a clinging  elderly population.  Because people are living longer, sometimes with chronic illness, adult children facing retirement themselves may feel they can’t cope with caring for an aging parent.  Adult children with young of their own don’t want to be further strapped by a double whammy. 

        This issue is difficult, but I believe the formerly outcast and frequently overlooked elderly population will become reenergized when the baby boomers take their place in geezerhood.  The sheer size and belligerent attitudes of this group should be enough to demand the attention of the rest of the American people.  The “me generation” will have a reason to be concerned and will speak passionately about these issues of aging somewhere down the road if not at this time.  Hopefully others will be listening.