Sunset years of solitude

Even as our cities get populated and social networking connects us all, those in the silver years make an effort to stay in touch, not to be left behind, finds Shalini Gupta

It was a rainy day and I was running late for a meeting. As I hurriedly reached the venue and rang the doorbell, a pleasant looking septuagenarian lady slowly opened the door. I was led inside to the dining table where I politely took my seat as an elderly gentleman in his late 70s sat with a laptop, accompanied by a girl who I could see was helping him navigate through his Facebook account. With disarming courtesy, he introduced himself to me and I responded in kind. His nimble fingers went back and forth on the keyboard pausing and reflecting, as he displayed a childlike curiosity, questioning the girl beside him, as he typed a happy birthday message to someone. And no, the girl is not his daughter; rather this is just a glimpse of a ‘shadowing session’ by an elder care specialist (ECS) from Epoch Elder Care, which provides home care to the elderly.

A report by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) last year indicated that India would be home to around 300 million elderly above the age of 60 (up from 100 million today) and also pointed out the need to ‘strengthen geriatric care services in the existing public health system so that the increasing care demands of the elderly can be met’. While medical care is a necessity owing to age related disorders, it is social inclusion and staying mentally engaged that is a crying need. This is what caught the attention of Kabir Chadha, Founder of Epoch, as he went through a personal experience and set out to address the challenges. “Non-medical needs such as being motivated enough to enjoy each day to the fullest, and the urge to be a part of a lively social environment are just as important as their medical needs, even a notch higher, when it comes to the elderly,” says Chadha.

Armed with a team of 30 elder care specialists or ECS, Epoch which began operations last year serves 150 clients in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. While one third of them have children living in India, but not with them, the children of the rest stay abroad. Most elderly suffer either from dementia and Parkinson’s and a very small percentage are clinically depressed, informs Chadha. Each ECS goes through an inter simulation interview to gauge how good they would be when interacting with the elderly. Patience, persistence and resilience are the key, since they need to make all efforts to become the best friends of the clients, by understanding the deeper nuances of their personality, hence the term shadowing.

A care plan is devised for each client by gathering information through a set of questions to understand their requirements including any medical condition they might be suffering from, background, culture (e.g. pre partition era, not a very happy married life) dynamics of the family, profession and academics, hobbies (or interests) personality (introvert, takes time to open up, suspicious, spiritually inclined) etc. This is then supplemented with the clients expectations to work out the final strategy, informs Neha Sinha, Senior Elder Care Manager at Epoch. The aim then is to connect intellectually, offer emotional support and help them keep track of routines (bills, salaries of domestic help, medicines, doctor appointments etc)

Typically an ECS visits a family twice a week. In the shadowing session that I attended, the ECS helped the gentleman recall important and even unimportant life events, egging him to write down his thoughts (such as birthday wishes to his grandchildren) and then share them, even translating a book in Urdu to English. We even played a round of golf after which he sportingly displayed a few magic tricks. All this may sound normal, nothing special too, but I could sense for myself the gap that the ECS was trying to fill. Opening up to a stranger is not easy though, when it is the company of our loved ones that we crave, so it might take time to gel along and even get comfortable with them.

Add to that a person who has seen and achieved much in life and now has to accept help from someone he doesn’t know, it can be challenging. The key then is empathy, sensitivity and perception, asserts Sinha. “Relationships cannot be defined in black and white and so if the person is refusing to do something, the ECS needs to be perceptive enough to understand the reason behind it.” Also, people can have the most interesting hobbies and interests, for instance a client was interested in history and maharajas, one wanted the ECS to show all monuments around Delhi, while another wanted to visit another city, recounts Chadha.

Look at it from another perspective, learning and growing and that is life, so if that is what we do in the initial years of our life, why hit the pause button, just because we are old! For the two hours that I attended the shadowing session, I was enamoured by how much childlike effervescence one could have in the twilight years, taken down memory lane by someone who has dementia as he recalled important life events letting us all into his personal space, learnt to putt and share a meal with people I didn’t know a while back. As I was leaving, he sweetly asked me to visit again, so he could show me a new magic trick next time, it was heart warming.

Two days after I was back from my visit, I saw a piece in a national daily of a 77-year old man, a retired Air Force officer, suffering from dementia, who died after five days of being lost in a city where no one had the sensitivity, leave alone the courtesy to ask him if he needed help. It paints a soulless, picture of a callous, heartless society. And so even as services such as Epoch light up the lives of some, I hope our society can muster up enough empathy towards our elderly. They are not to be left out, but to be taken in together. Let’s not forget, sunsets make for an equally breathtaking sight as do sunrises.

shalini.g@expressindia.com