Images of old age in promotions are usually taken in soft focus and set in autumn. They depict smiling, animated and well-dressed couples who are clearly delighted with the financial services, insurance, or other commodities with which they have been blessed.
The image is real. We all know elderly people who are healthy, active, care for themselves and are blessed with loving families.
For many of us, too, our grannies have been central in our lives: a source of care and unfaltering affection, they connect us with a world beyond our nuclear family.
But the image represents only part of the reality of old age. Many elderly people are ill, have lost their partners, live alone with little connection to their families, suffer from incipient dementia, and are dependent on others for the daily business of living. If they appear at all in the media, it is usually in bad news stories. They are seen as people different from us.
A significant minority of older people, too, suffer from abuse. They have a special day dedicated to them: World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, celebrated on 15 June. Its title suggests that most people are unaware of the reality of abuse and of its extent.
The limited studies conducted on elder abuse suggest that between one and five percent of elderly people throughout the world are abused.
The abuse is often physical, sometimes sexual, and also financial. Although the more publicised instances are of abuse by strangers and carers, family members are responsible for much of it. As has been the case with all domestic violence, much goes unreported. The isolation and shame of the victims contribute to the silence.
Financial abuse is particularly insidious. Anyone who has been associated with people through their illness and deaths sees how death brings out the best and worst in families. Sometimes family members care generously for their sick parents and are scrupulous in ensuring that their wishes for the distribution of their wealth are faithfully carried out. Death brings the family closer together.
"When close relatives die a childhood sense of entitlement and doubt about being loved can return and are expressed in greed."
But sometimes the response to elderly relatives is dominated by greed. People who have shut their homeless father out of their lives make contact in their last illness to ensure that they will inherit any goods he leaves. Family members squabble over the details and execution of the