By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
Living with our 84-year-old aunt, everyone in the household considers her health most valuable to the family in these pandemic times. Just like the rest of the 65-and-ups out there, she stays indoors to be as distant as can be to the risk of contracting COVID-19. That’s the protection a loving family provides her.
For her sake, most of all, we don’t accept visitors. Many households don’t anymore. But I have to admit how it pains me to see this whole set-up diminishing the quality of many a senior citizen’s life. It’s literally like living in a bubble.
Even if we took her out to the mall, for example, my aunt wouldn’t be allowed to step in, even if it’s just to order food for take-out or use the toilet. It makes me wonder about elderly spinsters and bachelors living together or widows and widowers whose grown-up kids are far, far away.
As more Filipino senior citizens get vaccinated against COVID-19, perhaps it’s about time pandemic policymakers think about improving the quality of their lives by bursting the bubble they now live in.
After all, there’s a comprehensive set of health protocols enforced in public places to protect them from getting sick, apart from the double-shot vaccine on their shoulders. Let’s face it. Many older people might not fear death itself as much a being frozen in one corner of the house waiting for it.
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Of course, some senior citizens are natural homebodies, living off their pensions and entertained merely by memories invisibly painted on walls or moving about garden swings and now-empty rooms.
For them, what a dose of joy and comfort it brings to be able to order food delivered straight to their gate and even shop online for little whatnots for visiting apos or grandkids. But the question is, “Whatever happened to their 20-percent senior citizen discounts?”
There’s a law that secures their right to such a privilege, and not even this pandemic has the force to deactivate that right. All it takes is for concerned government agencies like the Departments of Trade and Industry and Social Welfare and Development to knock their heads together to formulate guidelines for senior citizen purchases online like with Food Panda, Grab Food, Lazada Shopee and the like. Now, wouldn’t that improve life for the elderly Filipino even in these pandemic times?
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