“I have come to the conclusion that there is one essential, profound, underlying problem, and it is that the old are unloved.”
These words come from a French writer, Paul Tournier, who published them some 30 years ago in a book giving advice about growing old. The statement strikes me as expressing a continuing truth important to keep in mind. The temptation to slight, ignore, or even despise old people lies always at hand, even for those of us who are ourselves no longer young.
But the author also indulges in a generalization made invalid by legions of people throughout the world who show heartfelt love for the old. They are to be found everywhere – in homes, on public thoroughfares, in institutions – ministering to elders in need of at least a kind word.
A good case in point are volunteers and staff connected with Little Brothers of the Elderly. Little Brothers began in France, just after World War II. A man named Armand Marquiset felt compassion for the many older people in his country who had been left impoverished by the war and bereft of family members. Seeing how many of them lived in one-room walk-ups under the rooftops of Paris and elsewhere, he determined to reach out to these men and women in the spirit of brotherly love.
This organization, whose motto “To offer flowers before bread” expresses its spirit, now has a presence in eight countries. The United States headquarters is located in Chicago with local affiliates in five other cities, one of them Boston.
Last week I visited the house in Jamaica Plain where the organization makes its home and welcomes elders for monthly breakfasts and dinners. The staff takes pride in this new setting for work and hospitality, a house purchased and rehabilitated with funds contributed by benefactors.
However, the Little Brothers’ chief activity is visiting elders in their homes. The visitors are all of them volunteers, people of various ages who agree to give some time each week to the same older person. About 150 low-income Boston residents over 70 receive visits on a regular schedule, but on six major holidays each year the number swells to between six and seven hundred.
Many of these friendly visitors come from local colleges. Ten or fifteen of the students come from Boston College, enrollers in a program that requires them to give ten hours each week. A student named Katie describes in an annual report what it was like getting to know a woman named Shirley:
“On a Friday in November, we went on an outing to buy food for her three birds. We got back around 6 and she invited me to stay for dinner. Back in her apartment, we heated up chicken, warmed the soup, toasted the bread and cooked broccoli. As we sat down to this meal, I realized how close our relationship had become.”
Marty Guerin, longtime executive director for the Little Brothers in Boston, recalls how she felt when she began as a volunteer: “I loved that there was not a lot of red tape and that people were treated as people.” She continues to love her work and the generosity that characterizes the volunteers.
She explains some of the success of the volunteers by telling of the confidence that the elders feel in their visitors. “Some will not let professionals in,” she says, “but they’ll let us in.” Only once, in her experience of more than 20 years, has she heard of a problem caused by a visitor.
Marty attributes easy acceptance, in part, to the flowers which are the Little Brothers’ trademark. By bringing flowers visitors show how they care about the emotional needs of those they come to see as well as their material needs. Becoming friends to elders receives priority from the volunteers who visit.
In addition to visiting, the Little Brothers also deliver food packages, escort elders to medical and other appointments, run errands, and help with emotional support if elders have to move to assisted living. Volunteers and staff members also telephone the elders to provide reassurance and check on their wellbeing.
The impact made by the Little Brothers in the lives of the elders they serve has happened, I suspect, for reasons that go beneath the surface. Words written by Henri Nouwen may help explain why their visiting older people counts for so much:
“Although old people need a lot of very practical help, more significant to them is someone who offers his or her own aging self as the source of their care. When we have allowed an old man or woman to come alive in the center of our own experience, when we have recognized him or her in our own aging self, we might then be able to paint our self-portrait in a way that can be healing to those in distress. As long as the old remain strangers, caring can hardly be meaningful.”
Richard Griffin