Old Age haunts

Birthday after birthday, the anxiety mounts ... as age advances, so does worry.
What if I end up with chronic cough, weak knees, bad back, toothless mouth
etc etc - amidst all this and more who really cares about a few wrinkles ??

Jokes apart , there are a lot of aged people in my near circle for whom life is not easy; and its not just health problems that bother them.
The feeling of being isolated , neglected , uncared for, unrespected is all too common ....

The common story is of sons seeking greener pastures , or daughters being married off to far-off places leaving the parents to fend for themselves. I get to talk to old parents of my friends living here more often than the friends themselves. That's the way things have come to be, it is of little use blaming anybody. But it is the time when the elderly are probably feeling the most vulnerable. The changing dynamics of family in India has deprived the old of their only support system.

Most grandparents I know are not well-educated, are not economically independent and hence are totally dependent on their children and/or grandchildren. If this is one side of the coin, the other side has educated but still-in-the-wild senior citizens struggling to come to terms with the era of internet, ATMs and mobiles. It does not seem like a big deal to handle a mobile phone, use an ATM card or send an e-mail until you start teaching that to a sexagenarian or septuagenarian !
Recently, one of my mom's elder relative visited with a bundle of papers and a worried look. Her late husband had deposited some money in a private firm. She had received a letter saying she had to send back the deposit certificate to the firm to claim the amount. As she did not know English, my mom read out the letter and explained, but that was not the end of it, she was still finding it hard to decide what to do as she did not know what a certificate looked like, where to look for it, where/whom to send it to ... in short, she was clueless - pitiable situation indeed! If this is the condition of a fairly sensible senior citizen living alone in a metro city, it is even hard to imagine the plight of her less fortunate illiterate rural cousins.