Grandparents’ Day is celebrated this Sunday, 12th September. “Grandchildren can play a major role in counteracting any rift between parents and grandparents,” says Arnold van der Linde, Managing Director of IntegriSure, a company specialising in services and products for people older than 50.
According to statistics there are thousands of elderly people who live in dire straits while their children refuse to take any responsibility for them. Many of these old people are residents of old age homes. Separation often sets in when a mother or father dies or remarries. The “step” parent is then neglected and receives little attention.
In thousands of cases parents and children who have been in conflict with each other become estranged and drift apart. When the parents grow old and become fragile they are left to their own devices.
The biggest sadness of it all is that it is usually the grandchildren who suffer in these instances. As a result they have a bad or even non-existent relationship with the grandparents. At times it also happens that they suffer deep feelings of guilt because of divided loyalties between parents and grandparents who have gone their separate ways.
“Irrespective of the difficult situation, grandchildren can, as they grow older, help to heal the wounds of estrangement between parents and grandparents,” says Van der Linde.
He says that in a country where we have learnt to forgive and forget, it is unacceptable for blood relatives to emotionally destroy one another in this way. An occasion such as Grandparents’ Day affords each of us the opportunity to re-evaluate our own parent/grandparent relationships.
In many instances there are no deliberate malevolent intentions, says Van der Linde. The new hurried lifestyle; children who emigrate; and grandchildren who work abroad are all factors contributing to the continued aloneness of grandpa and grandma. A brief note or a short telephone call from a grandchild is all it takes to make an enormous difference in the lives of the elderly.