
Old age does not come with fiddlers
Articol de Ruxandra Pătrașcu-Maian
Two women eat fruit fry in a bright apartment on the ninth floor. They are encircled by a time-peeled furniture, on which a bunch of polenta pots, many coffee pots and jars of chamomile tea have cooled. Cold teas are the favorite summer drink of Mrs. Elena Marin, 75 years old, this also because she thinks that the water in Bucharest is not drinkable. The cake is the delicious gift brought by Maria, 21, who wants to show her affection for her new septuagenarian friend. I look at them and remember the last coffee I drank with my grandmother before she died. From here to grandpa it's just a fracture of thought.
One of the most vivid memories I have with him is from the summer of 2020, when my dad called me worried that he wasn't answering his phone. He asked me to pay him a visit. I got to the front door and knocked three times, but nothing happened. Not even after the fingers pushed with annoyance and power into the doorbell or the fists thrown into the door. That silence raised my pulse in my throat and the commotion settled in my thoughts: "is it safe to be home? failed? why doesn't it make any noise? why not throw an object on the floor? does he hear me? is he dead?". I couldn't stand in front of the metal door until my dad arrived, so I swirled around the block with a branch in my hand, hitting all the windows of the downstairs apartment and screaming through the ajar one with the hope that maybe grandpa would make a noise to show me that he was alive, if not that, at least to know that help was on the way.
As he parked the car, Dad ran to the garage set up by grandpa where he knew he would find a metal staircase. With her in one arm he chased up to the lip of the balcony. After supporting the staircase he wrapped a piece of fabric over his hand and broke the glass. He plucked the pieces of glass that could have scratched his flesh and curled up through the metal dial. From the balcony he saw his father fall by the bedside. With his broomstick he broke the thermopane, and then he yelled at me to call the ambulance. Grandpa was conscious, but he couldn't move. That moment was the first major event that suggested that grandma's death affected him worse than we understood and that loneliness might be a threat to his life.

We age faster than ever and are not ready for it/"Time must be lived, not killed"/The decade of aging
"Loneliness feels like an end."
"It's like I'm on the bottom of the sea."
"It's like a black hole that I can't get out of."
"I have this constant feeling of killing time. The death of time... time must be lived, not killed."
"Loneliness looks and feels like a desert."
"It makes me feel like I have broken wings."
"It's a pain, not physical, but mental."
These are just some of the testimonies that people from the NGO " Never Alone" have collected from the elderly they are witnessing. Population ageing is a global phenomenon, and by 2050 the proportion of people over 60 in the world will double, from 12% to 22%. By 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be 60 years of age or older, according to the World Health Organization. That is why the United Nations has declared the years 2021-2030 the decade of healthy aging: it is necessary for states to rethink multiple social systems to ensure dignified aging.
By 2050, there will be almost 500,000 people in the EU who will be 100 years old. The phenomenon of an ageing population has been evident for several decades in Europe. This process is determined by the increase in life expectancy, the historically low fertility rates and, in some cases, the migration – as is the case in Romania. In our country, it is estimated that in 2050 one in four Romanians will be retired, which will make us one of the oldest companies in the EU. What are we going to do with the people we are socially isolating today, and what does decent ageing mean?
Cătălin Dinu, executive director of the NGO "Never Alone", says that the loneliness of the elderly is installed in three stages:
- the loss of connection with the self, because the elder can no longer do the things he usually did;
- lack of close connections, because loved ones die or move away precisely because it becomes harder to meet;
- the disappearance of social circles, because the elderly are perceived as little relevant and become invisible, without an active role in the world they live, which leads to a deep disconnection, both with the self and with the outside.
The MISSION of the NGO is to provide vulnerable elderly people with a dignified ageing, but also to make us, as a society, understand that people also matter after retirement.

The program of "Never Alone" focuses on the idea that each of us needs others to be seen, to have an external motivation or purpose and especially to keep us physically and mentally healthy. So they initiated a social project where people who want to, that is, volunteers, enroll in the program to create a social connection with an elderly person. Then the representatives of the organization connect the volunteer with a single old person, and the pair decides together a schedule of joint visits and activities. In 2021, the people from Never Alone, managed to be with 245 elderly people with the help of 266 volunteers. The organization does not impose specific activities and clearly emphasizes that the role of the volunteer is not that of a social worker, far from it, but simply of a man who sees himself with another man at a story, that is, two people who seek friendship.
Do you want us to be friends?
A 70-year-old woman enjoys the sunset light in Turkey's Golden Bay, with the innocence of the child who finally received the coveted gift. She can't believe it to the point where her operated legs have worn her and she feels the mistress of the world. It's 2017, and Mrs. Elena Marin had not left the country until she retired. He finally fulfills the desire of his life: traveling.

In recent years, she has been interested in two events in Bucharest: the book fair and the tourism fair. So every year he was looking to go on a trip. Turkey has whetted her appetite and shown that she is not too old to fend for herself. After a while, he found another trip to Malta where he was told that he could go, without feeling judged for the limitations with which old age comes, because the guide will take care that the group respects his rhythm. She did not have high expectations from her adventure, it was also enough for her to sit on the terrace in the sun. But after she got on the plane something changed, and when the guide told them that they would have five days with five itineraries to choose from, Mrs. Elena lifted the cane in the air and asked impatiently: "can I pay them all?". When he tells the story, he's with his mouth up to his ears: "God, when I think about how much nonsense I can do!" The excursion guide gave it as an example because it moved very well, and even went out to sea on the Blue Lagoon in Malta. "Man, and when I saw myself there, I couldn't believe it. I am from the time of the Russians!" Now, at the age of 75 and with his voice extinguished, he feeds on memories, because he is ashamed to travel again. She thinks it's a burden for others because she has moments where her knees get stuck and she has to ask for help from those around her to sit in the coach seat.
Mrs. Elena is a woman who stubbornly strives to preserve her independence and dignity in a country for which the elderly are invisible until their votes are needed. It's always been hard for her to trust people, but now she's all the more complicated at an age where she knows she's fragile and vulnerable, although she doesn't like to be perceived that way at all. Even though her body needs a cane to keep her from falling that could keep her bedridden. Mrs. Elena moves slowly and walks with difficulty, the slowness of her legs also takes her by surprise at times. In the outside world it is surrounded by possible dangers, from some poorly built stairs, a stump coming out of concrete, any unmarked unevenness or any poorly defined step can be terminal. Not for her life, but for her quality of life. And in the house he has carpets that cling to the flip-flops, but there it's easier to keep the dangers in control. Falls are among the greatest enemies of the elderly because a crack or hip fracture can irreparably affect their mobility and limit independence. In the worst case, a fall in the house can mean heart failure or a deadly blow. Fortunately, Mrs. Elena left a spare key to the neighbor across the street, at least to have someone to open the door for her in case of an emergency.
She lives on the ninth floor in a Ceausescu block, trapped in her apartment like a tailless rapunzel and no prince. Millers Park is the first view that awakens his blue eyes every morning. In the last three years he has only gone out of the house for short distances, to the store, a few necessary urban trips to the doctor. The exception was the road to Botosani, her hometown, where she had to take care of her inheritance. She feels good in her apartment in Bucharest, it's the place where she is in a physical and emotional comfort that she hardly detaches herself from. Her home has the atmosphere of a past life, perhaps because Elena says she no longer lives for any future, but only for today. The door of her apartment is decorated with crucifixes gathered from the 11 countries she visited after her retirement, while the body still did not dominate her decisions. From the memories of those years, with the crosses strung from the top of the door to its bottom, Elena made her way to the cross for the last trip. "When she burys me, I go out there," she says serenely and at peace.

Mrs. Maria Elena is the kind of elderly woman who went to an event of the Patriarchate not for the service, but to see how a drone flies. "I was curious to see how it worked. Here she is, there she is," she tells me with the smile of curiosity on her face, but she is quickly wiped out after remembering the drones in Ukraine. Before her retirement she was a biology teacher, a profession that fed her for decades, as well as the pride of being the first person in her family to take the baccalaureate and go to college.
As we talk, either at the kitchen table or at the desk in the study room, she wears her body with dignity, keeps her back straight and her blue eyes aroused and focused, and although she still runs away with words through memories, she knows where to resume her ideas without help. She doesn't smile often, she says she's been terrified since her husband's death seven years ago. That's when he felt he was on his own and he had to resist, whatever and whatever it was. She has no children, and only one brother lives from her family, often almost just by phone, but he is also too old for regular visits. It just has it on it. "I only trust these two hands. If I get tired of them, I rest and drink a little water. Sometimes they also deceive me. For now, I've done it myself, but I've started thinking about other needs. Everyone lives alone, everyone is born alone and dies alone. So don't think about others," she tells me when I tell her that I wonder how we can build more inclusive and integrative social systems for the elderly. "You don't have time, I tell you," she says with the wisdom of the man who came to terms with the idea that the present is her main ally.
In mrs. Elena Marin's life, the people from Never Alone entered through a poster pasted in the elevator. The same was true of Maria, the volunteer who for almost a year has been helping her to appease her loneliness, like a surrogate granddaughter. Loneliness increases with age, but it lives in all of us. Maria Adam is 21 years old and — when she doesn't work part-time at the Regina Maria call center — she attends post-secondary nursing classes. What brought her close to Mrs. Elena, however, was her childhood because she comes from a family with divorced parents. "I know how bad it is to be alone. I thought it's not just about how I help this woman, but that I'm helping myself, it's a mutual complement. And we can feel alone just like the elderly. It's about empathy," Maria said to me one morning over coffee.
While she was little she was staying with her grandmother, who she thinks had Alzheimer's, but who has never been diagnosed. The young volunteer intuits that the part of her that feels guilty because she was not ready to take care of her grandmother is present in the relationship with Mrs. Elena. Maria believes that her family did not understand at the time what it meant to care for a person with a neurodegenerative disease.
On her first visit to Mrs. Marin's house, the Volunteer Never Alone was two hours late because she got lost. It was her first month in Bucharest and counting on the fingers of the bus stops did not help her much, because the RATB had changed the route. Her phone screen was broken, and although she tormented her eyes with Google Maps, halfway through she also ran out of battery on her phone. "I asked from man to man where the Pantelimon hospital was, then I got to a barbershop and with my eyes in tears I asked them to charge my phone, and then I called Mrs. Elena. The poor woman was waiting for me by the door that she did not hear the intercom. It was a shameful first meeting."
Maria's story also describes the dynamics of the relationship between the two, because at first Mrs. Marin had a very difficult time letting Maria do things for her, "it took a long time to gain her trust. Now it's OK, she calls me to tell me what to buy, but before that it was very hard for me to convince her to buy her a loaf of bread, although she is moving very hard being operated on her leg." At the beginning of the visits, Mrs. Marin was skeptical and often asked Maria why she wanted to do this, what her interest was, what she wanted to achieve. She found it hard to believe that it was just volunteering, and that amused Maria because she thinks it's OK to do things without wanting to get anything.
In Maria's imagination, the interaction between them would have gone much easier with a simple reply: "Hi, I am Maria, do you want us to be friends?", but she quickly realized that she needed patience, to give Mrs. Elena the chance to settle in. "She can't be like me, she can give everything at first, she's afraid of being bad people with her." – Nelson Mandela Their relationship grew gesture by gesture, as Maria says. The first times she tried to convince her to drive her home, an initiative that Mrs. Elena bared without the right to appeal, because she is stubborn and cares about her independence, but at the same time she is shy and did not want to bother her. Maria had a hard time accepting this, but she gave Mrs. Elena space, even though she was worried about how difficult it would be for her to get home. "I'm going to learn to be more thrifty, and for her to accept to receive," and now there are still reservations between them, but they're more relaxed than in the past.
"There's no one next to her and that's the problem. We usually talk about everything we do that week and not many things happen", maria describes Mrs. Elena's loneliness. The lady's health preoccupies Maria, because she imagines the vulnerability she can feel, but also because she knows how lonely she is, so the thought of a possible depression was not far away from her. In the winter she looked for books on how depression manifests itself in the elderly, to understand what she could do and how she could be present in Mrs. Elena's life in a favorable way. "I was bringing her books because I was thinking about how to keep her busy. I couldn't stay longer with her or visit her more. I don't know how I would react if something happened to her, to know that I'm not going to her anymore or things like that. Volunteering becomes very personal and you don't see it as an obligation, it's a thing in your nature. I couldn't give up. I told her I was inviting her to the wedding," says Maria with a laugh.

"We try not to position the volunteer as a savior"
Bianca Pintilie is a program coordinator at "Never Alone" and she also has the supervision of the relationships that are formed between volunteers and the elderly, she must understand their needs and work towards fulfilling them. He knows that they need to do more for their volunteers, which is why for seven months he has been organizing an online support group in which for two hours he talks with the psychologist of the organization. Meetings with volunteers are recorded and used as a virtual library, because they can learn from them how to manage the relationship with the new people in their lives. They use guidelines on the basis of which volunteers can recognize signs of depression or dementia in the elderly, and if they notice them, they are urged to notify the NGO, which contacts their legal guardian and recommends that they consult a specialist. "We try not to position the volunteer as a savior in the relationship with the elder, but to understand that they are there to be a support. They're both equally important in this equation." It's something that he admits that they also face in NGOs, because a lot of them want to change the world, but it's essential that they understand their borders.
"It's a very hard job for us," Bianca Pintilie explains to me, on the terrace of the "Never Alone" center. It refers to the fact that working with the elderly is not only about convincing them of what they are doing, but also explaining to them what an NGO means and why there is someone who does not ask you for anything and does not want anything from you!? "It's very difficult for them to understand what volunteering means, why these people come without interest, only in their time community work was patriotic work and they were forced to do it."

Distrust is a leitmotif in our society, but it is getting worse with age. The elderly are also skeptical of their work, even if they are a registered organization, whose advertisements they see on TV and about which they can read on the Internet, the fear of being stolen or tricked is great.
To increase their trust in the organization, Bianca says, the elders need to know that there is a boss behind him, that it is an authority that protects them from possible abuse. A volunteer told Bianca that at the beginning of her relationship with the elderly woman she was visiting, she wrote down in her diary all the details about her: name, surname, age, address, details related to her financial condition, "because she wanted to make sure that she was not a person who wanted something from her, she felt the need to have a way of control".
To make them trust them more, they come up with an extra layer of confirmation — if the social worker isn't enough, you go to the program director, if that's not enough, it goes on and so on. In addition, the beneficiaries sign a social services contract before starting volunteering, which they insist that the beneficiaries read carefully, and if there is any person who does not want to sign, they withdraw because they do not want to endanger the volunteer. "We enter a man's house, you can't get in like that anyway. What if a situation arises and our volunteer has no legal basis for being there?". I ask for a criminal record of the volunteers in order to check them and create a system as safe as possible, and with the elderly who are more skeptical they go to a lawyer who guarantees them the veracity of the service contract. It is important that both parties want to participate, both the volunteer and the elder, the members of the organization do not try an absolute work of persuasion to the elders because they have done this outdone and have accepted that forcibly caring does not work.
Opening the day care center for the elderly believes it will help them build trust. "However, we ask them to let us into their personal space, it's pretty much and it's not easy. We open the door for them and maybe they open theirs too." The center — as they call it — is both the place where the NGO team works and the place where the elderly can participate in socializing activities. They did focus groups with the elderly to ask them directly what they wanted to do there, what they needed and desired from future events, a gesture that surprised many of them. "They don't have this exercise, to understand that someone asks for their opinion without any hidden intention and without punishing them if their opinion is not in line with that of those who ask for it."
"Elders need more care than they receive"
For the young woman who had no friends in the capital when she moved here, Mrs. Elena is both a grandmother and a friend, and sometimes Maria prefers interaction with her than with other people her age, because she feels more at ease in the company of the lady. Maria thinks that Mrs. Elena "simply filled that void when she had to". In addition, it connects her humor and the way she relates to life, and Maria feels that Mrs. Elena inspires and supports her to be independent. The kind of support he didn't have at home. Interacting with her helps her understand her profession better, not to dehumanize or infantilize the person in front of her, and that's an essential criterion when we relate to the elderly in our lives. The thing he understands and from the looks and words of surprise I receive on the street from strangers. One day they were walking around their arm and a gentleman made a pirouette after them and shouted to them "lady, granddaughter like this you still have!", the interaction that stole a smile from Mrs. Elena and Maria raised her eyebrows in wonder.

They don't have the same visions of life, nor could they, they were born in totally different eras. Maria wants to help people who are begging on the street, instead of what Mrs. Elena would put the police on them. But when it comes to Mary's future, they're on the same wave. "Mrs. Marin is very focused on her career," maria says, and when she knows that the volunteer has an exam, she does not receive her to visit and urges her to postpone. For her, it's important for Maria to build a life for herself, especially because she knows she's supporting herself and can't ask for money from home.
At nursing school, Maria was talking to colleagues who would like to go to pediatrics, but she seems more attracted to the geriatric area. The thought of administering treatments to children scares her, and on top of that is added the image of nervous parents. "Old people need more care and attention than they receive. They are at a point at the end where they need all the love in the world that they can receive," says the young volunteer.
Mrs. Elena says that she still has control over her mind and manages to control the loneliness with occupations around the house, but "also in Maria I put my base. In my relationship with me, the fact that he's at the nursing home was an advantage. I have been strongly individualized all my life and now I do not show myself, but maria noticed, and to depend on others comes all the more difficult for me. I don't trust either the psychologist or the priest. Manage yourself is my expression," she says.
She knows what's going on with her. She is very aware of the degradation of her body, she understands very well that it will be harder for her on her own, she also knows that memory will leave her, and that at the moment she is suspected of a neurodegenerative disease. Read about these things with the consciousness of a person who has always appreciated information and who has created a room just for study, where the ritual of the armchair to read is still alive.
"Eh, life is complicated if you start to take it seriously. I took her seriously, only seriously, that's the flaw of my life," she says in a faded voice.

Although she enjoyed her legs while she was in her retirement, and at 68 she was flying a balloon, and now she has a collection of flags from the 11 countries she has reached, she says that the transition from an active life to that of a pensioner has been difficult for her. That's why he postponed his retirement three times, he needed the idea of leaving the business to settle in it. To some extent, retirement came with an oppressive feeling, a mixture of emotions from shame, to helplessness, to insecurity and fear. She had to retire at 57-58 and when she reached the age she imagined that someone was working on her file. It can still be seen, at the window, in the office of the three-room apartment, how he shook something out the window when he heard the bell from the nearby church. "The feeling of hopelessness, of the bell, I hold it back and now, it's been 15 years since then."
The epidemic of loneliness/We live longer, but worse
Loneliness can become a new epidemic. Britain has a ministry dedicated to loneliness, Japan has an industry of searching for people who die alone in their homes, and in the United States of America an epidemic has already been declared. In our country, the data collected by those from Never Alone in partnership with Kantar (on a fairly small sample, however), shows that one in four elderly people in urban areas experience high states of loneliness, one in two people over 65 years old say they have a low level of social support or even lack, and people over the age of 75 who no longer have partners have even less support than those between the 65-75 age group. As expected, most of the support comes from your life partner, children, family or neighbors.
According to a study published in 2015, both real and perceived social isolation are associated with an increased risk of early mortality.

"Loneliness is a feeling, the perceived sensation between existing relationships and those desired by the patient. Social isolation is the objective state of having few social relationships or a rare social contact because they are sick who have social relationships, are not isolated, but still feel alone. Too often, both loneliness and social isolation are considered inevitable components of aging and not a serious and preventable problem," explains geriatrician Valer Donca. Lived over a longer period of time, loneliness increases the risk of emotional disorders such as depression, anxiety, and can also lead to substance abuse. It also has physical costs and exposes us to heart disease, strokes, hypertension, cancer, dementia and premature death. All of this actually means that it also has a pretty high economic cost on our medical systems. For example, an analysis in The New York Times estimates that social isolation and loneliness are associated with an additional $6.7 billion in Medicare spending and cost employers more than $154 billion annually in stress-related absenteeism.
"I remember the saying of a great clinician who said that a doctor is obliged to consider more than a diseased organ, more than man in his entirety, he must see man in his world", emphasizes the doctor. The feeling of loneliness is a risk factor similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to researcher Julianne Holt-Lunstad. It's also a risk factor for dementia and functional decline, meaning that an old man who sits alone may end up not doing his basic activities, the everyday ones that are essential for a truly independent living – to be able to eat alone, to dress alone, to get up out of bed, to go to the toilet alone – and the loss of these elements means the difference between living and surviving.

Romania has a chronic problem with its health workforce, but also with their distribution and mix of skills at territorial level, especially given the current demographic trends. "By 2050, more than a quarter of Romanians (27.7%) will be over 65 years old, and the proportion of those over the age of 85 is expected to increase to 8.5%, from 4.8% in 2019", writes in the study "Labor force in the field of geriatrics in Romania: the need to improve data and management". Or recent findings show that long-term care services for the elderly are underdeveloped and fragmented.
It should also be noted that geriatrics is a relatively new specialty in Romania. We have 13 faculties of public and private medicine, but only three geriatric departments, one of which — the oldest — is located in Bucharest. According to the same study, in 2018, there were only 157 practicing geriatrics and 85 geriatrics in training nationwide. Researchers warn that there is a huge difference between supply and demand for the future, when we will have more and more elderly people that we will have to take care of. In addition, professionals active in geriatrics have an uneven distribution "57 (36.3%) are settled in Bucharest, where less than a fifth of the country's population lives. The geriatricians in training present a similar model, with 50 residents in Bucharest (58.8%) of the 85 beginner doctors at national level", informs the same study.
Dr. Valer Ioan Donca, specialist in geriatrics and former Interim Manager at the Cluj Napoca Municipal Clinical Hospital, says that the geriatrics deals with the acute, chronic, preventive, recovery and terminal care of the elderly. "All these five components are essential. Unfortunately, however, in our country, the acute and preventive component, not to say the terminal one, are a little marginalized." That is, we tend to treat rather than care, which means a lower quality of life, but a higher cost of it. "Just as pediatrics is the internal medicine of the child, so geriatrics is the internal medicine of the old man. Unfortunately, a lot of people treat old people, but too few people do geriatrics," he adds. Social infrastructure should be redesigned to meet the social and medical needs of the elderly. "Neither to overload the medical system for social problems, nor the social one, all that means outpatient and family for medical problems," he points out.
"The medical system has increased life expectancy at birth by over 20 years in the last 50 years, the bad part is that healthy life expectancy has not been influenced at all. In other words, what has the medial system been able to do? To prolong the suffering somewhat", concludes Donca.

"According to demographic predictions, 2050 will be the year when Romania becomes the oldest country in Europe. All the countries in Eastern Europe are bad at this kind of indicator. That means one in four people will be in their 60s. These are some challenges from health and care systems, to anything, to what these people read, to what they buy, etc.", says researcher Loredana Ivan, president of ENAS (European Network of Aging Studies).
However, in PNRR aging is mentioned sporadically, in passages taken with copy paste that actually say nothing, but only tick some terms that need to be included. There aren't many references in the National Health Strategy 2022-2030 either, although it's better than in the NRPS, where four points per quarter of a page of this issue are dedicated. The ideas are basic and really necessary: preventive interventions to increase the quality of life, long-term care services at home, the development and implementation of national, regional and local plans for the management of the elderly and vulnerable population, the assessment of the needs of the elderly, namely the degree of dependence between the medical and social sector, the definition of individual service plans and the development of integrated health services at the level of community so that the services offered are as holistic as possible.
"The avoidable mortality rate, i.e. deaths that could have been avoided by providing optimal quality healthcare, was two and a half times higher than the EU rate in 2015. Healthcare spending is relatively low and staff shortages are still a problem", writes the very introduction to pillar 12 dedicated to health, economic, social and institutional resilience. Even if there is no clear focus on geriatrics in the NRPS, three reforms are presented which should ultimately have the effect of improving health and social services. In the coming years, more than 180 million euros will be invested in a new foundation of our social health system.
How we see the elderly and why it matters
Stereotype becomes a bias when the balance between positive and negative elements obviously tilts in favor of negative ones, from this perspective ageism becomes a vision in which elements with negative connotations predominate. For example, if you say that an elderly person is typical, it's not necessarily crappy, but if you say it's a grumpy person it becomes negative. "Visual ageism is a form of visually representing the elder in a manner that reflects a negative stereotype" that influences the behavior of both the subject and the viewer, says Loredana Ivan. "That vision of their group is externalized and others begin to share it and short- and long-term negative effects occur." For example, the elderly can more easily come to premises such as "what else should I learn this at my age?", which denotes a loss of self-confidence and of one's own individual relevance.

To see what the elder looks like through the eyes of the students, Loredana asked them to draw a portrait of an old person, so she noticed that the cane, the bringing of the back, the weight of the gait are very present. In addition, he noticed that young people represented men more positively than women, they perceive them as healthier individuals. What she says, in very patriarchal societies such as Romania, is due to the pressure felt by women to grow old by remaining young, and then obviously this is also reflected in a negative visual representation of women's aging. Comparatively, men are seen wiser and represented with more dignity. He later also asked a group of elders to draw a portrait of their age group and their depictions were not much different from those of young people, and this, Loredana says, shows that the negative stereotype is internalized.
This directly influences the well-being, that is, the psychic comfort of the individual. On the principle of "I lived my living, I ate my cornmeal, I can not go now to do sports at the stadium, I will not do any movement". On a physical level, things are even more obvious, says the researcher, for the first time in studies anorexia is recorded in the elderly, which did not exist until now, and this is due to the problematic representation in the media and advertising. Basically, the same problems that young people face due to the surreal images on social media also affect the elderly, which is why records are also recorded in aesthetic operations. "Let the elder be an elder!" the researcher says vehemently.
Another very important noxious aspect in the current discourse is putting on the individual the empowerment of aging "it is up to you to look like this, it is up to you to actively age, it's not my job as a society. That's not really the case. How to actively age if you live in miserable conditions? What if you don't have a good job? It may be up to you if you have a decent living." That's why she criticizes the concept of active ageing, because she sees it imposed by European societies and their needs to do something with old people, but "She's very sinful because she puts it on the shoulders of the individual. If you can't adapt, it's your fault. If you can't, it's your fault."
In our law, theoretically, the elderly have the right to an integrated social protection because seen as a vulnerable category, but according to the data from the Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity, most of the asylums and hostels (licensed*) for the elderly are private, namely 614 private homes versus 152 public. And Mrs. Elena understands the situation very well when she says that "a working man should be able to afford a decent home, but we are so poor that even with large pensions we can barely afford it".

Although the services offered by Never Alone are not social work, but rather socializing, befriending and prevention, they are essential as social support. Cătălin Dinu, the executive director of the organization, believes that the pandemic has helped them because people have understood the cause of loneliness more easily because they have lived it on their own skin. "It's important to get the elderly to recognize the condition and know that they can do something and that's not how old age should be. It's easy to recognize it in yourself, but it's hard to recognize it to others."
According to an internal research of the organization, in Romania there are about 450,000 elderly people affected by loneliness. Dinu says that the first step would be to create a culture of third-age dignity, and here he thinks of their colleagues in Switzerland, who have been open for 40 years and all the time they have had few beneficiaries precisely because there is the culture of the ability of old age, "we are talking about another standard of living for sure, but the elderly have the idea that old age is one of the most beautiful periods of life. they've worked a lifetime and it's time to enjoy life." The elder is not perceived by them as a recipient of social services, but it is also a resource in the relationship with the volunteer, because there is an exchange there that is beneficial on the other side as well. On the principle of giving what you can to the community. "I see how these people change and it happens after you do some very simple, natural things that you can do with any friend. And it's not about – oh, old, vulnerable – no, there are some people who want to enjoy life", concludes Cătălin Dinu.
A rollercoaster of emotions
Maria, the "Never Alone" volunteer, does not have a fixed schedule when she goes on her weekly visit to Mrs. Mary, sometimes she stays three hours with her, another five, it depends from day to day. He calls her all the time before visiting her, to make sure he was going. Mrs. Marin is waiting for her with a list of things they have to do or the questions she has about her phone, among other things. But now the phone is her focus. "I feel like the sun is going up and I have a beautiful park in front of me and I look into the park through my phone window. I start with my health, with my illnesses, about medicines and then I wake up reading and I keep reading", describes Mrs. Marin her relationship with the phone. So Maria draws her symbols in an address book "this symbol is WiFi, this is Bluetooth, that's where you send pictures".

– Man, you didn't take it..., mrs. Elena begins a sentence that she does not have to finish because Maria understands from the first.
– Forgive me. Now. I have a notebook and every time I come to her I have to take my pulse and tension, maria explains to me amused by the ritual they have formed.
– She takes it for herself, not for me, defends Mrs. Elena. Why did you stop at 99, that suits you? The lady teases Mary while she also measures the oxygen in her blood.
– No, no, oxygen saturation fluctuates. It's normal for these values to constantly change.
– That's what I know, but I don't understand when to read. That at the voltage stops and that's it.
– It's not a huge difference, you're looking at the limits.
– Ah, where should it be? That's how I know it, but I was looking for "what it has to be" not "where it should be", Mrs. Marin replies in a serious and yet familiar manner. If you don't see her eyes sometimes it's hard for you to understand whether she's joking or not because her tonality has few inflections, maybe that's the legacy of the biology department.
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to go to Mrs. Elena to tell her that I'm taking my boot, I'm going. Either way, even if I moved in, at least I would talk to her on the phone, I can't imagine that we would become strangers." Recently, at the end of a meeting at McDonalds, Mrs. Elena took her in her arms, kissed her on the cheek and told her that she loved her. "I couldn't believe it. I thought that moment was incredible and I didn't think it was going to happen. Sometimes it's a rollercoaster of emotions."
Articolul a fost realizat în cadrul Burselor pentru jurnalism despre filantropie, program realizat de Asociația pentru Relații Comunitare și susținut de Lidl România.
Articolul a fost publicat pe Vice.com și poate fi găsit aici.
OTHER ARTICLES
FOLLOW US
#cronicidefilantropie
No comment yet, add your voice below!