By: Constance Singam
First published: 13 May 04, TODAY

THE latest survey of people over 65 shows that nine out of 10 live with their families and yet almost 43 per cent said they feel lonely. The flip side of that is that 57 per cent are not lonely.

But old age does have a bad press and a depressing image. There are fearful realities reflected - and imposed - by that image.

When my 82-year-old father had a lung infection and was sent to a geriatric ward, he protested: "I don't want to go in with old people".

His children were not very sympathetic. "Why doesn't he accept he is old?" we asked each other.

The reason was that he didn't want to wallow in the dreariness of old age.
He didn't want to be contaminated by them. He didn't want the physical and mental image of age to rub off on him. Who can blame him?

I was reminded of this the other day when I accompanied a friend to a nursing home. The rooms were comfortable and pleasant but we were disturbed by the sight of old people in the dining room being helped to eat.

Nowhere was there a happy face.

We comforted each other by saying that if we did go gaga, we would be quite indifferent to our surroundings.

Betty Friedan, the grand dame of feminism, in her book, The Fountain of Age, published 10 years ago, confounds some of the negative perceptions:

For instance, in Britain only 4 per cent, in Australia 4.4 per cent and in the United States only 5 per cent over 65 were in homes; only 5 per cent of people over 65 in the US then suffered from Alzheimer's, roughly the same figure in Europe and Australia.

In Singapore, the story is the same.

Friedan's research found a crucial difference between society's image of old people and "us" as we know and feel ourselves to be.

The other day, a friend and I went to the cinema and when we asked for the senior citizen's rate the clerk accommodated us without asking to see our ICs to verify our age. Do we look our age, we asked ourselves.

We wanted the privileges but, heavens above, we didn't want to look aged!

The good news is that perceptions of old age depend on one's attitude and age.

I have just read Maya Angelou on the subject:

There is a cruel and stupid intolerance among the young. I know that is so because at the tender age of 30 I was given to declaim in injured tones: "Old women of 50 look awful in ropes of coloured beads, thong sandals and fresh flowers in their hair" and "I've had it with old men (of 50 also) whose skin has gone to leather yet still wear open-neck shirts …"

Now that I am settled firmly into my fifth decade and pressing resolutely towards my sixth, I find nothing pleases me so much as gaudy out-sized earrings, off-the-shoulder blouses and red hibiscus blooms pinned in my hair.

Do I look awful? Possibly to the young. Do I feel awful? Decidedly not ...

In my most reflective moments about my own ageing, however, I worry about growing old in a society which is focused on the economy as the driving rationale for state action, with its competitive market economy and consequent individualism.

I worry about the growth of for-profit medical care; the lack of state-supported meaningful long-term care benefits; the poor quality of institutionalised care for the aged and the frail; the focus on reducing health-care costs and its attendant problem of the increase in family responsibilities for post-hospital care as patients are discharged earlier than before to reduce costs; and the lack of sensitivity for the inequities in gender, race, health status and health care.

In my more positive moments, I am inspired by the exemplary lives of women friends who, released from their previously-limiting feminine roles, have crossed the age and gender divide to find new strengths and capacities which defy age.

Their energy and active involvement in their work and in their community subvert stereotype notions of ageing and keep loneliness and depression at bay. There is Elizabeth, for instance, who, at 81, has taken off on a month's walking tour of Vietnam.

Our generation is fortunate, I think. In my mother's generation, a 50-year-old was old.

Today, thanks to science and an awareness of healthy living, a 50-year-old is in the prime of her life. I will grow old in a different way than my mother.

I, for one, tend to believe that old age is always 15 years older than I am.
So 65 is not old.

One can be lonely at any age. But old people have fewer resources than young people to deal with it.

Constance Singam is a social activist.