Look at them, there they are. They are old people. They occupy park benches. They look for sunny corners. There they come, one by one, wearing their hats and using their canes. They sit and talk. They observe pigeons and children playing. They remember. Now they have more past than future.
Look at them, there they are. They are old people. They occupy park benches. They look for sunny corners. There they come, one by one, wearing their hats and using their canes. They sit and talk. They observe pigeons and children playing. They remember. Now they have more past than future. They tell their life stories, talk about the changes in scenery. This city was different before. They, the old people, made it what it is today. These men and women, with their work (on the streets, in the factories, in their homes), raised our present world. Nobody seems to thank them. They used to be young too. No one seems to remember it.
Old people are arriving. By midmorning, they sit around the pub table, and start playing cards. Take a glass of wine. Just one, not very full: that’s what doctors do, prescribe tablets and prohibitions. Old people talk about their illnesses as if they were not theirs. They laugh a lot, showing their toothless mouths, when they are called “elderly people”. They don’t know a lot about euphemisms, but they know what they are. They are old people. When the cards’ game is over, they go back home. On the way, they buy some bread. They eat at home, alone.
On the way to school, old people go. Grandparents taking their grandchildren whose parents (old people’s sons and daughters) cannot do it. They can hardly follow their children, so they ask them to stay close and give them a hand. And the children smile, grab the hand of their grandparents and walk with them, and tell them their adventures and dreams. And the old people smile, because they know that they are still needed.
They are our parents, our grandfathers and grandmothers. They are our blood, our character, and our history. They are what we have been, what we are, what we will be. They are old people, our old people. All our love and gratitude to them.
