Saints and Sinners: Are final years happy times?

Golden years they may be for some, but many senior citizens don’t see them that way.

A great number of older people feel it isn’t only the loss of health but loss of dignity that makes the latter years of life so hard.

The picture of the elderly living in the homes of their grown children, surrounded by adoring grandchildren, appears to be largely nostalgic.

Interviews with the elderly show that they are feeling more neglected, more unwanted than ever. They are aware of a loss of status in society, which they believe only money can buy back.

Are they wrong?

“No, I’m afraid they are right,” replies a clergyman who has worked with the elderly for many years. “It is entirely possible that money is an elderly person’s only ticket to the time, attention and esteem of a world that has passed them by.”

When experience was “the great teacher,” age was the equivalent of wisdom. In those days the elderly were looked up to and held in high regard. But we value many things over experience today – “youth, vigor, education,” points out one observer. “We don’t use the phrase, ‘the wisdom of old age,’ much any more.”

At least we won’t have to worry about living as long as the patriarchs in the Bible: Methuselah lived to be 969, according to Genesis 5:27, “and then he died.” Jared, Methuselah’s grandfather, was 962. Noah was 950, Adam 930.

Did these ancients really push 1,000 years before they died? Those who believe that everything in the Bible is literally true say yes.

A Seventh-day Adventist book says, “When one considers how close these pioneers of the human race lived to the creation of the world, their longevity does not seem unreasonable.

“Not only were there constitutions perfect (unaffected by hereditary disease), but their food was of the highest excellence — grown in soil that had not been denuded of health-giving minerals.”

“The stream of life also flowed more gently. There were none of the fierce tensions that make people old so soon today.”

“Most Bible scholars, however, don’t take the patriarchs’ ages literally. They speculate that the early Bible writers were not to be outdone by the still-earlier Babylonian storytellers who were masters at stretching the credulity of their audiences.

When you remember that one Babylonian legend mentions a king who reigned for 65,000 years, the Genesis writer was exercising considerable restraint.

By the time the Psalms were written (about 1,000 B.C.), life expectancy was down to about what it is in the modern era. “The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” or maybe in exceptional cases 80 years, said the Psalmist.

But lately we have been outstripping those biblical limits. Centenarians are no longer a rarity. What made George Burns such a marvel is not that he lived to be 100, but that at 100 he was enjoying the pleasures of a man half his age — like a good cigar and a martini.

Such a boon is seldom given to the chronically or terminally ill among the aged who have few enjoyments and who must wonder why the TV weatherman Willard Scott makes such a fuss over somebody who reached the century mark.

While an increase in life expectancy may be a reason for the medical world to stand up and take a bow, not all the elderly in the population are applauding.

George Plagenz is an ordained minister and veteran newsman based in Columbus, Ohio.