"One day it will be you": Woman’s touching message about how the elderly are mistreated
A Melbourne woman’s post about the way the elderly are treated has gone viral, sparking discussions about compassion and kindness.
Adele Barbaro took to Facebook after she witnessed two older Australians in need being ignored in public.
“One man just needed Panadol for his wife but the shop assistant simply said it’s in ‘6’,” she wrote. “But he struggled to navigate the supermarket and as I watched him go in the wrong direction, I left all my groceries and took him where he needed to go.”
Within the same week, she saw another elderly man walking in the heat with “a huge scrape and blood on his leg” to no one’s attention.
“He walked past people in the cafe, while he slowly made his way to his car,” Barbaro wrote. “Not one person stopped. Or looked. Or acknowledged him.”
She said she checked on the elderly man, who turned out to have had a fall.
“I sat with him … and heard him talk about the old frail body that he is in, that fails him now, every single day.”
Barbaro implored others to “take a minute” and give a hand to elderly people struggling in public places.
“Once upon a time they were you,” she said. “They were busy, they had work, they had children, they were able.... Today, they are just in an older body that is not going as fast as it used to.
“One day it will be you, it will be us.”
She hoped more people would be moved to care for the elderly and that “someday, not that far away, someone does it for me".
The post struck a chord with readers, with more than 192,000 likes and 132,000 shares at the time of writing. Other Facebook users also shared their stories of seeing older people get mistreated.
“Don’t walk by, stop and ask if the person needs help,” a user commented. “It but takes a minute and could make someone’s day.”
Have you ever witnessed or experienced something like this? Tell us your story in the comments below.