The elderly woman in the wheelchair didn’t say one word to me while waiting in the hospital hallway for a medical test. She didn’t have to. Her eyes said it all.
“I wasn’t always like this.”
Before I could say hello, her blank stare returned to the sterile floor. Or maybe to her past. I’ll never know. She seemed to reveal a sense of shame that doesn’t get much public attention, though it’s as common as wrinkles and age spots.
The silent shame of old age is a social scourge that can be found everywhere when you look for it. I see it in every crevice of communities. Not with every person of a certain age, but with enough of them to notice a pattern. Maybe I should have expected it in a hospital setting, where older people congregate like wheelchairs at an entrance.
I waited in a busy hallway as my fiance received an annual mammogram in an exam room. As usual, I stared at my phone while occasionally watching people come and go. The older woman’s wheelchair was being pushed by a health care worker. The old woman didn’t have to look up to guide herself into the medical office, so she didn’t. Her eyes glanced up for just a second when she passed me.
She couldn’t see my mannerly smile through my mandatory mask. I couldn’t see her previous incarnation through her present condition. Was she once a chatterbox? A young beauty? A strong career woman? A fitness buff? I could only wonder.
She’s now a shadow of her former self, I’m guessing. I’m also guessing most people walk past her without noticing she’s there. Not out of rudeness. Simply out of habit. Our culture worships youth and beauty, not old age and disabilities.
Some would describe this as ageism, defined as a disparaging stereotype based strictly on age. This attitude reveals itself through prejudice and discrimination. It may not be as conspicuous or notorious as racism or sexism, yet it’s just as destructive. Maybe more so considering how fast our country is getting old.
(AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
Unlike the gradual aging process that sneaks up on many of us, ageism can slap victims in the face when it’s first experienced, I’m told.
“Honestly, I didn’t realize my age — 62 at the time — until I noticed people treating me differently than in my younger years,” an older reader told me. “It wasn’t that they were mean or abusive to me. It’s that they treated me like I was invisible. Like I didn’t exist.”
This must be a painful self-realization after a lifetime of achievements, accomplishments and, well, existence. I’ve seen this realization in the eyes of people whose current situation screams for empathy. Or at least for acknowledgment. “Hello, I’m right here!”
I posted on social media about this sensitive topic, and more readers than I expected resonated with its general description.
“My eyes say it every day of my life,” one woman commented.
“I feel like you are talking about me,” another woman wrote.
“This hits oh so close to home,” a reader said. “It was within the past year that I needed to ask, for the first time ever, for assistance at the hospital when I was there for tests … one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my life.”
A man in his 70s said he feels as if he lives in a cave, worsening his feelings of invisibility and alienation.
“It makes me feel like no one cares whether I’m alive or dead,” he said. “If this is ageism, I was probably guilty of doing it to older people when I was younger. Shame on me. Shame on all of us.”
John Prine, the late singer-songwriter, wrote a song that captures the most familiar form of ageism without once mentioning the word. If you’ve never heard “Hello in There,” I urge you to give it a listen. Its ending lyrics will echo in your head.
“So if you’re walking down the street sometime and spot some hollow ancient eyes. Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare as if you didn’t care. Say, ‘Hello in there, hello.'”
It’s a sweet sentiment with the purest of intentions. I agree that a single gesture of kindness does more good than a thousand kind thoughts. I try to keep this in mind when it comes to casual interactions with those people who have hollow ancient eyes.
Despite the best of intentions, this gesture doesn’t always work. Some people seem past the point of possessing whatever it takes to reply to a simple hello. Their face appears shrouded in shame or embarrassment. Their eyes escape contact with others. And, as I experienced at that hospital, their silent response conveys a poignancy that some of us may someday experience.
Without saying a word, they sigh, “I wasn’t always like this.”
