I spend a lot of time these days going around old-age homes, and, to my surprise, they’ve become one of my favourite places. The residents, usually in their nineties, seem to have an undiminished appetite for life. They joke, argue, complain about the food, and generally have a feistiness that belies their years. I often find myself wishing that I were as young as they are.
I remember meeting a lady in Manchester who was 105. She was in a wheelchair. She said to me, ‘I don’t want you to think, Chief Rabbi, that I’m usually in a wheelchair. It’s just that last night was my 105th birthday party, and we got a little carried away.’
So I’ve been very struck this week by the debate about the future of the National Health Service and care of the elderly, especially the feeling, on the part of nurses, that they’re undervalued. I can’t think of any group of people who deserve to be valued more. After each visit to a hospital or an old-age home I come away overwhelmed by the day-to-day kindness and patience of the staff. And I’ll never forget how my late father, during the many operations he went through in his eighties, used to say to me, ‘I’m not yet in heaven but those nurses are angels.’
Leviticus tells us: ‘Stand in the presence of age and honour the face of the old.’ And one of the most moving verses in the book of Psalms is the plea: ‘Cast us not away when we grow old; as our strength fails, do not forsake us.’ I shudder at those who see the elderly as a burden. That must never be. Societies are judged by how they treat the most vulnerable, and that includes the very old.
Many years ago I heard Alastair Cooke tell a story in one of his Letters from America. He said that anthropologists had found a remote tribe whose members lived to unusually long old age. A team of researchers was dispatched to discover the cause of their longevity. Was it their diet? Their way of life? The climate? It turned out to be none of these things. What the researchers found was that this was a group who attached great honour to being old. When we value age we help to create it. Which is why we must always show the elderly the care that seeks no return. It may or may not add years to their lives; but it certainly adds life to their years.
