Help me, help me. Remember those words from the commercial for life alert buttons on TV?
It is easy to sit back at this moment in our lives and laugh out loud. Me? It will be a cold day in hell before I need one of those. Watching sports, being able to freely channel surf, drive to the grocery store, go shopping.
These are a few things we take for granted that we do every day without thinking. I have seen some humorous commercials having to do with the elderly. Remember the Clap On commercial? It actually isn’t for elderly; it is for anyone who doesn’t want to move to turn the lights out. In the commercial they use an older person with gigantic hands.
Getting older isn’t really the Golden Years. It can be times that bring fear. Fear of living alone, fear of falling, fear of lack of money for survival. I can name a few people who I have known in my life that fell and ended up in a nursing home for the rest of their lives.
One fall, and it makes a life-time change. Being older sometimes means becoming forgetful. Maybe medications are forgotten, or eating a meal gets overlooked.
One thing I can see over and over in the late hours of the evenings are commercials for life insurance policies. They always start out with the guilt trip. Don’t leave your loved ones in state of having to pay for your funeral.
Elderly are taken advantage of so easily. Salesman at the door or on the phone trying to sell something, which can sometimes be no more than a scam. Here there have been elderly that have given a lot out of their savings to have work done in their home. The guy or team promises to come back the next day to start the work. He/they walk out the door with at least half or full of the amount charged and never return.
Scams on the internet. Elderly are lonely. Older people know how to work computers and through the innocence of finding a companion, they end up giving all or most of their funds to a scammer. It is down right scary how our older generations can be treated. It is scary even for me as I look at glimpses into my future.
So I guess you can call it the Golden Years if you are lucky to still have your spouse, travel the world, and enjoy the freedom each day can bring. But for the ones whose spouse has died, or the children don’t want to be burdened, it can be a scary time to live in.
Who I am 