It’s an early winter morning on the beach. The sky is overcast and dark clouds swirl like living giants wrestling above. The cold wind picks up now and then and a light rain adds to the dreariness of the day. The horizon is obscured by a misty fog and closer to shore, one after another, rows of furious waves come crashing in. On the sand lay countless broken seashells that glitter under whatever little sunlight there is. This stretch of the beach is a popular destination for beachcomber. But today, the place is empty – except for a few sandpipers and more broken seashells than one could count.
Near the water, resting on the cold wet sand is this dull and broken half shell. It lays helplessly on its back - jostled in and out by the edge of the coming and retreating waves. The elements have rubbed off the shine on its coat and its color has faded from the passage of time. Its edges are no longer sharp and the furrows that used to be well defined are now barely visible. It is just a remnant of its former self - a relic of a glorious past among other relics on this cold and wet beach. It’s a microcosm of the late phase of all life cycles on earth. But look carefully, and one can see the beauty that comes with time. The same beauty that’s evident in an old barn that graces a countryside, a rusted tractor that rests on a green pasture, a well-used bicycle leaning against a country home’s window, an antique well pump that contrasts the colors of fresh winter snow and visiting cardinals, a broken garden box that showcases the first flowers of springs, and the forgotten weather vane that romances the full autumn’s moon at midnight. This old shell adds rustic beauty to the austere and cold landscape on this rainy day. Its damaged exoskeleton remembers countless stories of life on this beach. It witnessed children playing in the surf as parents watched on every summer. It listened to the whispers of many lovers strolling by at dusks. It welcomed the fishing trawlers on the horizon at the break of dawns. It holds a trove of treasured stories that lasts a lifetime. It is the definition of beauty of age and wisdom of the time. Someday, it will disappear to the other side of heaven. But for now, it is beautiful in its own right. And on this side of heaven, it should be treasured.
And that is how we should also treasure the elderly. In a society that’s sometimes cold and austere, where political and other differences often cast dreariness on our days, the elderly tend to be marginalized in the waves of endless quarrels. They walk about life slowly, slumping under the weight of time and typically sneered at for holding up traffic on busy highways. They do complain of the joints that hurt, the heart that’s weakened or the mind that’s rusted with the passage of time, and the bowel that forgets. But sit and talk to any one of them and one may hear a forgotten world coming alive. Behind the furrows on the forehead is a trove of treasured stories. Beneath the wrinkles is once a daring youth that may have stormed the beach of Normandy or crash-landed in the jungle of Vietnam. The curvature of scoliosis might belong to a former ballerina that once dazzled audiences on the world stages and the tremor of Parkinson’s might now slow the steps of a retired nurse who once walked the halls of a hospital as she cared for the sickest of the sick. The failing heart may belong to a woman who loved and lost while caring for her family as a single mother. The demented soul was once a brilliant mind that helped send mankind to the moon. And many more are stories of accomplished lives if we bother to slow down and talk to them. Yes, someday not long from now, they will move on and return to God. But for the moment, on this side of heaven, the elderly are to be respected, honored and loved for making our world a more beautiful place then…and now.