When we were children once in a while we would catch a story from the old folks.
We scarcely paid attention because they were, well, old and the problems of the old really had no bearing on us.
We really did not care about the Great Depression or World War II that was ancient history almost as old as the pyramids.
What did prick up our ears were the horror stories. We are not talking werewolves or vampires, but children.
Those related by distant relatives or friend of friends about how an old one weak in mind and body was bamboozled or bullied by their own children into giving up everything they owned for nothing and then put in a home for really old people, to die a miserable death in filth and poverty.
It really was not what was said but how they were told.
For a child to betray a parent was thought of as a completely shameful act.
We suppose the telling of them had a purpose and they did get our attention.
And when our time came to take care of our old people we did.
So we guess they worked.
This week we were contacted to provide some help for an old teacher who despite a good pension found it difficult to make ends meet.
We did not ask the circumstances or the reason why for the troubles, but we did begin to think.
Childless and unmarried he still lives alone and while dozens of former students did offer to help out this time we could not help but wonder what the future holds.
He is a beloved teacher, but every year there are thousands and thousands of similarly never married no children people entering the ranks of the retired.
Never in the history of the world will there be as many single childless elderly in a society.
And who will take care of them?
Care giving is only part of the problem.
We are certain that the horror stories we heard as children will become ever so much more common.
Only it won’t be the sons or daughters but more and more perfect strangers who look upon the vast population of the elderly single and childless as a buffet to plunder.
Who will protect them?
Yes there are laws against thievery and embezzlement.
There are evens laws against elder abuse but is a 75, 80 or 90 year old with a host of physical problems and perhaps with a bit of dementia able to file a police report? Or make a coherent complaint to a social worker?
We shudder to think that for our generation the real horror stories will not be told because for the vast majority of these old and lonely people there will be no one to tell them and no one to care to hear them.
One could argue that these single childless elderly have only themselves to blame. Like the grasshopper in the tale they enjoyed the present without a thought for the future.
But on the other hand this vast population actually believed the line of the new great society.
We saw freedom to an extent never before seen in human history. Freedom to travel, freedom to not have children, freedom to divorce and the freedom to reinvent ourselves.
But every freedom comes with a price and we shudder to think that the bill is coming due.
Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose.