I have been getting frantic calls and text messages from a sister of a close friend who claims, as usual, that she is short of money for her drugs. My friend had in the past, asked me to ignore the messages and even threatened that ‘pandering’ – my friend’s choice word for the situation – to the distress calls could affect our relationship.
But it’s hard to ignore distress calls from someone you have known for more than four decades who seems to have fallen on hard times because she wasn’t always like that. It’s hard to ignore someone who claims to need money to meet medical bills. It is even harder to ignore because the amount she asks for at a time is so small that you feel only the genuine – or the desperate – would ask for what seems a pittance in today’s inflationary climate.
However, the frequency of the requests is also hard to ignore. Not long after she has thanked you for a request, another one is in the mail. This suggests someone whose desperation has made her lose decorum. Or someone who has run out of options. This, if true, is a tragic turn of events. She was a hard working professional married to another professional. Together, they had two sons who had attended the best institutions of their time.
Theirs, however, was a typical middle class home gone sour. Long divorced, her now grown up sons – and I mean grown up – not only live with her, they live off her. These sons, according to information, have developed an appetite for hard drugs. The angst of my friend and other siblings, is that their sister should have shown tough love and taken them to a rehab rather than housing them and feeding their appetites.
This is probably behind their call to starve her of funds which is another form of tough love. One can’t but wonder about the sustainability of the whole thing. This lady is in her middle 70s and looks much older probably because of the stressful situation. She, like many in that age bracket, is not in the best of health. The children who should now be looking after her are deliriously living off her.
This parent/child scenario might seem to be at the extreme end of the spectrum, though we have heard of ‘children’ who have threatened parents or even killed just to satisfy their drug or other wanton habits. The reality is that many children whose parents were middleclass professionals in the 70s and 80s have been a disappointment to their parents. They were products of a period when Nigeria was good and these children enjoyed the best of the times. Much was expected of these children who attended the best of private schools, had music and art lessons along the way, were taken to elite clubs at weekends for recreation and to Europe for holidays at the end of each academic session.
It seems however, that they were given those things money could buy but starved of those things money could not buy – things like humility, mental strength, resilience, responsibility, hard work and most importantly, giving back- to parents and society. Under the guise that we didn’t want our children to suffer the way we did, we raised children with a culture of entitlement: children who were not prepped for tough times.
Unfortunately, Nigeria’s economy went south and tough times descended on the country. The middle class was the hardest hit and its offspring soon found they could not provide for their own children, what their parents had provided for them. This has led to despondency bothering on depression. This has led to a loss of focus. This has led to restiveness. This had led to hard drugs. This has led to emigration in cases.
The result is that we have a large number of old people who were once upper middleclass struggling to pay bills. Even those who can afford to pay bills are feeling the pangs of loneliness and emotional deprivation. Their children have fled the country. Those who remain are living off their aged parents however they can. Theirs is the class of people who took care of their parents and are having to take care of their children. These children are so entitled that they forget to be grateful.
They see nothing wrong with their attitude because they were not raised to prioritize looking after aged parents even when it is not convenient. They were not taught the Yoruba adage which says that when a bush rat grows old, it sucks the breast of its children. Apart from being deprived of financial indulgencies by their children, they are also deprived of emotional indulgencies. The culture that the aged lives alone when one spouse is gone is a new, alien culture. The common thing was that the aged lived with a child or at least a close relative.
A care giver is a new phenomenon which can never provide the emotional connection that an aged parent needs. The situation is even dire for men who find themselves at odds in their home and find, too late, that they have to take care of their domestic chores. But it is not all the children’s fault. You cannot give what you don’t have. How many parents in their child rearing years took time and effort to teach their children the value of money? Of hard work? Of respect? Of sharing? Of responsibility? So the bed they lay while raising their children in their active years is what they will lie on in their golden years. It is unfortunate but many oldies will spend their golden years alone and uncared for.
The message for those yet to reach their golden age is to prepare mentally, physically and financially for it by creating and developing outside interests. They should also find a second stream of income that will provide a financial safety net. In essence, they should try to create a life without a spouse and definitely without children. That way, they would limit their expectations and regard everything else as a bonus. I write as someone who has a ringside seat.
