I stepped into a wine store the other day, because Claire had spotted a model train chugging along the shop’s periphery and wanted a closer look.

Browsing through the vintage wine lined up in rows within the temperature controlled wine cooler, I looked at the price tags of some wines from the 60’s and 70’s and gasped at how expensive some of them were. Truly, people will pay top dollar for a good bottle of vintage wine.

People age too, but oftentimes, in this media-saturated culture where youth is celebrated and the aged dismissed, we hear more about how people try to prevent the physical ravages of age from affecting them.

Botox and face-lifts are standard procedures for many Hollywood celebrities and often what is lost in the translation, is how age should progress hand-in-hand with wisdom, and how wisdom is worth its weight in gold.

I was saddened to read, not too long ago, that some Singaporeans were upset about nursing homes for the elderly being built too close to their HDB apartments. One woman was even quoted as saying how she feared that the nursing home, with its close proximity to her daughter’s school, would increase the risk of diseases affecting the students in the school.

How did it come to this, that people have forgotten the value and dignity of our elders and the wisdom that our elders still have to share with us?

The elderly still have wings. Have we who have grown up, forgotten that they too, can still fly? Have we convinced them, that they have lost their wings?

My Popo spent some time in a nursing home after suffering from 2 strokes. I visited her whenever I was back in Singapore and the experience was often a sobering one. Popo had family and friends visit her practically every day, but there were many residents of the nursing home, whom the nurses told me, had not received a single visitor for the past few months. Some, had not received a visit for the past year.

You could see the vacant stares in many of their faces. Every time my parents and I visited, they would look up, and look behind us, as if they were expecting their families too, to come around to visit them.

Loneliness is a beast. It eats away at a person’s soul.

I was invited to help the Habitat for Humanity one weekend, to clean up the one-room apartments of some of the elderly who were staying in Chin Swee Road. After cleaning up the apartment of one elderly gentleman who was in his 70’s a couple of us decided to serenade and entertain him with some old, classic Chinese songs like ‘Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xing” ie. “The Moon Speaks For My Heart”.

Helping to clean up several one-room homes. 

Source: Habitat for Humanity

After we had finished singing for him, he was in tears. He told us that he was saddened that strangers like us were willing to visit with him and even sing for him but he hadn’t seen his own children in years. My heart went out to him and I wondered how many old folks like him had been forgotten by their children.

A tree, no matter how old and majestic, will wither and die without water and sunlight. A man, no matter how proud or strong, will have his heart broken when he is abandoned.

Where is his family? Where are his friends?

I read recently about a kindergarten that was built into the center of a nursing home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With its big pane-free windows, the sound of children playing and laughing fills the air and this joyous sound swirls around the nursing home. The nursing home residents often shuffle past the kindergarten on their way to their beds and their activity centers. Many will stop to look and smile at the active children playing within.

A reading program called ‘Book Buddies’ was started where rotating groups of elderly and kindergarteners take turns to read to each other several times a week. The children, often from small nuclear families, find much comfort in their ‘grandparents’ reading to them and many of the elderly look forward to seeing the children and reading to them. As a result, the children in that program even scored higher in their reading tests than their counterparts in other schools.

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The Grace Living Center (GLC) is home to two classrooms of about 60 kindergarten and prekindergarten students, as well as to 170 elders, who are "grandmas" and "grandpas" to the students.

GLC provides students with daily mentors in their academic and social development, yielding results in reading and vocabulary. Its success has inspired the opening of a similar school in Kansas and is a model for intergenerational learning.

Source: Edutopia

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How wonderful to have a purpose and to feel needed.

I would love to see the same concept applied in Singapore, to see the lives of our elderly citizens integrated into society in new and innovative ways.

I visited the redwoods not too long ago and saw some amazingly tall trees that were beyond my imagination. These trees were so big that the circumference of their trunks were wider than an SUV. Some were thousands of years old.

We respect and are in awe of these trees because they have lived through many generations, they have survived many winters and seasons and yet, have much to teach us. How much more precious is a person’s life.

I remember sitting with my late grandfather, listening to him happily share stories about how he used to date my grandmother by cycling to her house to pick her up for a movie, and how they raised their seven children in one rented room of an old attap house in Katong. He would share with me stories of the tactics he employed to feed his family and survive during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore in World War II.

Through his stories, I learned about life in Singapore in a different time and era. I lived vicariously through his stories.

In Singapore, there is much that is being done to preserve and share the stories of our heritage by the various museums.

But in our families, there are treasure troves just waiting to be discovered. Perhaps by asking one of our elderly family members to share their stories of growing up in Singapore, we might reach a deeper appreciation of our blessings and discover anew the story of how we came to be.

The founding fathers of Singapore understood that people are our country’s most valuable resource. Let us pride ourselves then, not just on our economic progress and wealth, but at the way we treat our most vulnerable citizens, both the young and the old.

For life is valuable at every stage, with much to receive, and even more to give.

Top photo from Lee Hsien Loong Facebook.

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*Corrinne will be playing in Singapore at the Supertree Grove, Gardens by the Bay on Valentine's Day. She'll be singing a selection of love songs, accompanied by just the piano and violin.