The Ongoing Sacrifice of the Elderly

One out of 100 people. And growing.

In his still-incredible, still-unparalleled New Yorker essay “This Old Man,” writer Roger Angell, then 93 years old (and now 101), described in chilling (yet characteristically funny) detail of how older people tend to be treated in social situations.

We elders — what kind of a handle is this, anyway, halfway between a tree and an eel? — we elders have learned a thing or two, including invisibility. Here I am in a conversation with some trusty friends — old friends but actually not all that old: they’re in their sixties — and we’re finishing the wine and in serious converse about global warming in Nyack or Virginia Woolf the cross-dresser. There’s a pause, and I chime in with a couple of sentences. The others look at me politely, then resume the talk exactly at the point where they’ve just left it. What? Hello? Didn’t I just say something? Have I left the room? Have I experienced what neurologists call a TIA — a transient ischemic attack? I didn’t expect to take over the chat but did await a word or two of response. Not tonight, though. (Women I know say that this began to happen to them when they passed fifty.) When I mention the phenomenon to anyone around my age, I get back nods and smiles. Yes, we’re invisible. Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore. You’ve had your turn, Pops; now it’s ours.

That’s the word: Invisible. That’s how we treat our elders, and, I’d argue, has been how we’ve treated them for years. What a devastating line: Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore. When someone gets too old, they become a show piece to be placed on a mantle: Theoretically important, but also pretty quickly forgotten. We do this, and will still complain when it happens to us. Because every young person is just someone hasn’t become an old person yet — and will be lucky if they even get the chance.

I thought about Angell’s essay this morning when I came across a staggering statistic in The New York Times. As the country approaches 800,000 dead from Covid-19 — I remember when the Times put the names of the first 100,000 on the cover of its paper and it was seen as some sort of political act — another horrific factoid emerges: 1 out of every 100 Americans over the age…