Life cycle

When we are young and vulnerable we are looked after without question.
People go out of their way to make sure we feel safe, love and protected. We are the future. We don’t know it yet, but everyone else does.

As we grow we become more independent, and to those around us we become less in need of safekeeping.

We have our own children and the cycle starts again. We do what our mothers did for us and what their mothers did for them. We protect our children at all costs and teach them to do the same one day.

Eventually we see our own children have children and sometimes their children have children. Slowly but surely we become less able to protect and more in need of the same protection we once had as a baby.

We sometimes can forget about the vulnerability of those in the later chapters of their life. It is in these elderly stages that life can go full circle.

They need more than ever what they once provided to their own: Love, attention and nurturing. Like young babies who smile when they see their mother, the elderly smile when they see their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

It doesn’t matter for how long, that presence for a moment means to them more than you will ever know. Don’t forget to visit the elderly in your family. You will be there one day too.