As modernity creeps in with the industrial society, an agonising crisis grips families. Family ties are weakening and ageing parents have become a heavy burden for young couples. Filial gratitude, once the backbone of our culture, has been banished from the dictionary. When parents become no longer useful as baby sitters they are mercilessly cast aside as old furniture. They feel isolated and neglected. They suffer and drown their sorrows in their loneliness. Worse, some are left in a home for the aged without any visit by their kids after being deprived of their possessions.

The world has become too materialistic; how can we remain indifferent to the untold misery of these old people? Do they deserve such treatment after sacrificing so much for their children? All their life, they have cared for everyone and, in the twilight of their life, they are left alone. They have brought home money, stability and love; they have transmitted cultural values. They have battled hard to make their children become what they are today. A Chinese proverb says: ?When you drink water, think of its source.?

Elderly people have only walls to talk to. In some families, children split responsibility by separating mom and dad, taking care of them by rotation, pushing parents to dark, filthy rooms. They are ridiculed and accused of being senile. Many suffer the fate of Lear, rejected and neglected by children like Goneril and Regan. There are increasing reports of elderly people being robbed, assaulted and even murdered cold-bloodedly.

Health is always associated with wealth. The elderly are entangled in an unfair financial squeeze. As their health fails, they become more dependent on their children for doctor?s visits and medicine. Many have to beg for money to meet their needs. A few have to work up to their death to survive without tasting the joys of retirement. Some decades ago, caring for the elderly was a sine-qua-non for the young but nowadays it has become a burden. Many shirk this responsibility as extended families have made way to nuclear ones.

Solitude kills more than diseases. Medical science has elongated life span but, paradoxically, many old people live in misery. They end up in solitude after a rich professional life. They spend their days within four walls, their eyes glued to the television waiting for death. The younger generation thinks the best solution is to send their parents to old people?s homes to get rid of a burden. The truth of life is that parents who nurtured them once now need nurturing. Unlike child-rearing, caring for the old needs love, time and money. The road to old age is the journey all of us have to travel in our life one day. We measure the degree of our civilisation by the way we treat our elders. One day you will be treated by your children in the same way you treated your parents, goes a Chinese proverb.

Philip LI CHING HUM