One of the things about getting older is that it just seems like you don't matter. There's plenty of evidence to support that presumption. Children and friends work you in when it's convenient. The church stops by when your tithe stops. Old co-workers find that after a few visits about the past there's not much to talk about. No one makes clothes for old people that are stylish. Men have a choice between something that looks like you're perpetually playing golf or the MayTag repairman's outfit. Women have these dreadful floral print things that make you feel like a table cloth or couch cover or a picnic table with fat things all over it..
People want to matter all of their lives but they want to matter as they grow older more than ever. Retirement for most folks is a weird combination of not enough income and too much time. After you've toured Florida, seen Mt. Rushmore, paid two visits to the children, and spit in the Grand Canyon, you may find yourself longing for Mondays and somewhere to go.
The strange thing about work is that it gives us a place to go consistently as well as something to do consistently. If you're good at what you do, you make a nice income, make some friends, and make a life for yourself away from home. Work helps you matter. Mattering is one of those little by products of being employed that slips by us.
It's important to let parents know that they matter. They need to know they matter to you for something other than a chance at an inheritance, or place to go when everywhere has been gone to, or to borrow their car, washer, or screwdriver. Parents need to matter to their children but they also need to matter to themselves in a way that gives them meaning as they age and not meaninglessness.
Meaning, according to author Daniel Pink, is the new money. No where is that capital more important than when we are getting older and our parents are doing the same. It's important to help parents find a way to matter. My experience has been that people hang on in life for about as long as they think it matters to them or someone close to them that they do.
One of the challenges in "warehousing" our aging population in care centers, assisted living, or special care, is that there's very little in those places that supports the belief that you matter. It's as if when you reach a certain age, you and your belongings go to a sort of personal Public Storage Unit. Only in this type of unit, no one ever comes to take anything out. You just lie there in storage, along a hallway of other storage units, waiting for the unit to be cleaned out and refilled with someone else. Those places don't help "mattering" in the least.
Here's what you can do to let your parents know they matter. Help them stay engaged in something that gives them meaning. Help them connect with new people where they are now living. Help them stay in touch with friends by hooking them up to the Internet or writing letters for them or dialing the phone so they can talk with someone who remembers them. Help them see how they can be of service where they are. Help them be contributors as well as consumers.
Ask them to tell you stories about the people and events that shaped them and their lives. Ask them about how they met your mother or father.. Ask them about their first job, their biggest challenge, their biggest accomplishment. Ask them how they would like to be thought of now, and most importantly...in the future. Ask them what you can do to help them feel like they matter not only to you but the world around them. Ask them what it is they could begin doing that would make them want to stay and not go from this planet.
Close encounters always strip delusion bare. The greatest delusion that older people suffer from are not when they recall and embellish the past. The greatest delusion is when they start to believe they don't matter enough to have a future. Victory Frankyl, the author of "Mans Search for Meaning" wrote that if we have a "why' to live then we can deal with any "how". A survivor of the worst of the Nazi concentration camps, he saw people transform themselves and the world around them with a "why" in their lives.
Make sure you know that you matter and that you tell your parents that they do as well. The "why" for both of you is simply to keep on "mattering".
