SENTINEL WATCH December 8, 2003 Issue

Supporting seniors—'Duty of action' required

By Sarah C. Nelson

Last August, a small news item caught my attention because it was so unbelievable. It reported that as many as 5,000 people in France had perished during Europe's summer heat wave. I thought it was a typo. I could comprehend 50 people. But 5,000? That number was later updated to a staggering 15,000. Why wasn't this being reported more openly, I wondered. It was so many more than were lost in the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Through further research, I learned that the majority of those lost were elderly. Well, that explains it. I thought. They were people who had lived a full life and were perhaps no longer thought to be indispensable to society. Soldiers or children dying in such numbers would have made headline news. At first I was content to leave it at that. But suddenly it hit me—what was I thinking? Among other things, many of these people were grandparents.

I started to think about what my grandmothers had meant to me. Even though one of them was about 96 when she passed away, not once had I ever thought of her as "dispensable." She always had a smile on her face; never raised her voice at anyone; never judged. Whenever I arrived for a visit, she greeted me with tears of love and anticipation. Completely unselfish, she was pure joy to be with, right up to her passing.